


Magic of the Mind

by Tales



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 13:06:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tales/pseuds/Tales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: As close to the original prompt as my muse would allow. <br/>Original Prompt: Severus steps back into the Potions classroom when the resident master leaves in the middle of term; unfortunately, this means that he's teaching one or more of the Widow Weasley's children, and she has a way of over-involving herself in their education. Severus finds a creative way in which to distract her from interfering in his curriculum. Bonus points for students catching Severus and Hermione in *coughs* an intimate state. (No Ron-bashing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iulia_linnea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iulia_linnea/gifts).



> Warning: Not so much E.W.E., more you read it how you want to, and I'll do the same.   
> Genre: Your basic romance  
> Author's Note : Beta-ed by the unholy triumvirate of geyer, (punctuation mistress of pain), alwaysjbj, (chief cheerleader and sounding board) and bambu, (canon goddess).

  


"Miss Weasley, perhaps you would care to tell me where in the instructions on the board it says that you should _crush_ your sopophorous bean?" Severus glowered down at the girl, whose parentage was as obvious to him as Harry Potter's had been. Her stature or lack thereof, her bone structure and the texture of her hair all screamed Granger, but her auburn tresses and sullen ice-blue eyes obviously came from the Weasley side of the family. It also seemed that the child was no more averse to copying the work of others than her father had been.

"It isn't in the instructions on the board."

Severus pinned her with a look. He'd already gone through this lesson earlier.

"Sir," the girl added, making it plain that the honorific was an afterthought.

Severus's lips narrowed but he passed no further comment on the lack of respect. "If it is not in the instructions on the board, then perhaps you would care to tell me why you were doing it that way."

"Because, Sir, the instructions on the board are inefficient."

"The instructions on the board are designed to test pupils' abilities. We are at N. - E. - W. - T. level now, Miss Weasley. Perhaps there are other methods of brewing a _similar_ but different potion which make it possible for any moronic dunderhead to appear more talented than they deserve, but you were told to use the instructions on the board. Followed correctly, they produce a _Ministry-approved standardised-strength_ potion. By diverging from those instructions, you risk producing a potion which will endanger the life of the patient it is supposed to save. _Evanesco!"_ Snape swirled his wand, and the redhead's cauldron emptied.

"Your uncle may have managed to cheat his way through this class when Professor Slughorn was teaching it, but my predecessor is currently in St. Mungo's, and, for my sins, I am in charge of this class until he is once more fit for duty. You _will_ follow the same instructions as the rest of the class from now on, Weasley. For today, you will take a seat at the table nearest my desk, and you will begin an essay, explaining the importance of each of the ingredients in the legitimate version of the Potion and the reasons we prepare them, _in the way the book tells us to_. I will expect a full roll of parchment by Saturday morning, when you will report to my office at ten a.m. for detention."

"But—" The boys who sat on either side of the girl shot to their feet. "We're playing Hufflepuff on Saturday, Sir," Warrington protested.

"And this should concern me why?" Snape softly demanded.

"Well, aren't you her acting Head of House, as well?" Wolesley asked.

"She's our Seeker."

Severus's eyes narrowed. He had discovered on entering the room that the class had been seated according to alphabetical order, rather than according to the pupil's whim, part of Minerva's endeavours to force interaction between the houses. Other than allowing himself a slight smile at the fact this placed Granger, The Next Generation, between two Slytherins, he had not been particularly concerned. It was only now that he noticed the child wore a green and silver tie.

"We'll get creamed without her," another boy protested from the front row. The Hufflepuff beside him grinned.

"Silence!" Severus hissed, and the room promptly stilled. "Miss Weasley, front and centre, and bring your textbook with you."

  


* * *

  


"Come in, Fred," Hermione answered the insistent knock on her door in a resigned tone. "What have you done, _now?"_

The boy hesitated just long enough to make Hermione certain that at some point soon one of Weasley's latest Wheezes would be test marketed. Then he launched in with his true purpose. "Snape's evil, Aunt H. Downright evil."

 _"Professor_ Snape," Hermione corrected automatically. "And he's not evil. He's just... a little bit cranky."

Fred snorted and gave a toss of his head that made his long dreadlocks spill around his shoulders. "Tell that to Dad, only make sure you're next to his good ear!" he muttered.

"I'm sure you're not here to complain on your father's behalf."

"The git's given Pipsqueak detention—"

Hermione gave a loud sigh. "Fred, whatever my daughter has done, _she_ hasn't seen fit to come and complain—"

"On Saturday!"

"What?" In one fluid motion Hermione rose to her feet and pushed her chair back.

  


* * *

  


"You evil old misanthrope!" Hermione spat as she barged her way past Severus Snape and into his private quarters. "You twisted miserable old git! Was I really _such_ an insufferable know-it-all that you have to take it out on my daughter twenty-five years later?"

"Professor Weasley..." Severus paused and shook his head as if putting those two words in combination had made his mouth feel dirty. Whatever he'd been about to follow up with was lost as Hermione plunged on.

"You sat there at breakfast and listened to me telling Minerva that Molly and Arthur and all her uncles were coming to the match, _and_ that they were bringing Oliver Wood to see her play. It's her seventeenth birthday, and you're so damned caught up in the fact that Harry's mother chose James over you, that you're still punishing anyone who had the remotest connection to her. Move the hell on, you dour old bat!"

"Madam," Severus interjected, "if you knew me better, you would know that I don't listen to _anything_ before I've had my third coffee. Certainly not the over-excited cooings of a doting mother. I had no idea about either the Quidditch match or her birthday when I gave her detention, merely that the girl was an insolent cheat."

Hermione's palm flew toward Severus's face, but his reactions were even faster, and he grabbed her wrist before she could make contact.

"You want to watch that temper, Professor Weasley," he announced calmly as he forced her arm down. "A display like that with a pupil could get you fired."

"The pupils don't say things like that about my daughter. She has never cheated in her life."

Severus raised a disdainful eyebrow. "Really? Then perhaps you can explain why she prepared her ingredients for The Potion of Living Death in the manner described in my personal potion book, rather than using the instructions set out by Libatius Borage? Surely after what Potter did to Draco you should have known how dangerous it was to allow her access to that book? Or have you never grown out of your silly tricks and games?"

"Is that what this is about?" Hermione demanded, stepping closer in her fury. "Some misguided attempt to minimise the harm you did with those awful spells? That book was destroyed years ago. If you hadn't stolen away like a thief in the night after the battle, you would have known that. Vincent Crabbe tried to attack Ron, Harry and I with Fiendfyre, something he learned quite legitimately during _your_ term as headmaster. He not only killed himself, but destroyed everything in that version of the Room of Requirement, so don't you dare talk to me about children having access to spells they shouldn't have."

"The book itself may have gone, but one of you must have kept copies of the instructions."

 _"You_ gave copies of the medicinal potion instructions to Poppy Pomfrey. Professor Slughorn has been ill for some time. The only thing that quieted him enough during the fits to let him sleep was the Draught of Living Death. _I've_ been brewing it twice a month for him for most of the last year. My daughter often helps me. She knows the professor's flaws, but she has a fondness for him just the same, and they both share an interest in Potions. _That_ is why she knows your improvements. I'm sure it never occurred to her that by not following the textbook, she was placing others at a disadvantage."

Severus scowled. "Even were I to accept that, I will not be seen to change the child's punishment just because she went crying to her mummy."

"You _really_ don't know my daughter, Professor. She has a stubborn streak a mile wide. She would never come running to me. Minerva wanted her to stay in my private quarters for a couple of weeks after her father died. Even then, she was having none of it. If you want to know, it was her cousin who told me about it. He wants to have clear bragging rights when Gryffindor win the Quidditch cup this weekend."

"And is it so certain that they'll win?" Snape asked.

"Unless Slytherin beat Hufflepuff by two hundred and ten points or more," Hermione explained.

"I'm curious, Professor, as to how any child of yours and Weasley's came to be sorted into Slytherin in the first place," Severus remarked.

Hermione actually laughed, the animated expression causing Severus to remember the night of the Yule Ball, when the one-time ugly duckling had shown her true feathers. Only this was no fifteen-year-old charge, this was a beautiful woman, old enough to have a teenaged daughter, but young enough to almost pass for her older sister.

Severus loosened his grip on her wrist, but he didn't let go, and Hermione made no effort to pull free.

"Pip told Harry that he had taken the coward's way out. She said that everyone complains about Slytherin being creeps, but the only way that would ever change was if decent people chose to get sorted in there. She said Slytherin needed a kick up the bum, but you couldn't do that from outside or it would just turn into a house war. And, of course, she probably didn't want to have me as Head of House."

"So she takes after her mother when it comes to hopeless causes?" Severus suggested, allowing himself the ghost of a smile.

"You won't change your mind?" Hermione asked in a husky whisper.

"You know I cannot." There was a hint of regret in his voice. "Even setting aside the matter of the potion, the child was sullen and rude from the minute I introduced myself. No doubt, she'd heard so many stories about the greasy git, she thought respect was optional."

Hermione's gaze dropped to her feet. "I'm sorry, Professor—"

"Severus. However temporarily, we are colleagues now, and equals. When not in the presence of pupils you may call me Severus."

"Severus, I assure you, I have done my best to ensure that what she knew of you reflected the truth of your situation rather than its appearance. She knows that Harry and Ginny admired you sufficiently to name their son after you—"

"They did _what?"_

"Albus Severus," Hermione pointed out, and plunged straight on without giving Severus a chance to get over his obvious shock. "Her father might have told her a few horror stories, but in jest, not in an attempt to bias her against you. Nevertheless, the Weasleys are a close-knit family, and you maimed one of her favourite uncles. It's hard for her to put that aside, even if she knows it was an accident." Hermione smiled softly. "Severus, you've obviously been a bit out of the loop. Would you mind if I ask you where you've been for the last quarter of a century?"

Snape sighed. "The Falkland Islands. They speak English. The climate is not dissimilar to the one here, and it was far enough away to be left in peace... at least until Minerva managed to find a school owl with enough brains and stamina to make the trip."

Hermione gave a rueful smile. "If it makes you feel better, Minerva's been trying to track you down for years. When Slughorn was hospitalised, she sent out a dozen owls in the hope that one of them would find you. I'll keep Pip back at the end of class tomorrow morning and have a word with her about her attitude," she conceded.

"Pip wasn't the name on the register," Snape remarked.

"Compared with her cousins she was always this tiny little thing and..." Hermione gave a self-conscious smile. "...she could get quite shrill when she was excited or upset. Her dad used to call her Pipsqueak, and it sort of stuck."

Severus gave a slow nod. _"If_ her essay is of a suitable standard, I may allow her to go once I have marked it. _If_ it is, and she must not find out before. It is part of her punishment that she should think she will miss the game."

"Thank you, Severus."

"Is she really that good?" Severus asked. "On a broom, I mean."

Hermione's face was bathed in something Severus was forced to admit was the light of love. "She's her father's daughter." She nodded her goodbye and slipped from the room.

  


* * *

  


"Severus?"

Minerva's distinctive tones stopped him in his tracks, and he turned and waited for her to catch up.

"I don't believe I gave you patrol duty tonight?"

Severus gave a self-deprecating smile that shocked his companion in its gentleness. "Old habits die hard," he suggested. "I was fifteen when I last slept easily within these walls. I thought I might go up to the astronomy tower. Perhaps you'd care to accompany me?"

For a second Minerva found herself trying to work out what benefit was in this arrangement for Snape, but then she told herself to let it go. Her map of this man's character had never been accurate, and even if it had been, it seemed it was long out of date. "Why not? So long as you're planning to walk rather than taking a dive out of one of the windows."

Severus smirked as he resumed his former path, and held out his elbow toward Minerva in an old-fashioned gesture of courtesy. "That is a mode of transportation best saved for emergencies, and I am somewhat out of practice these days, I must admit."

"I hear you're already giving out detentions," Minerva remarked dryly.

"Only where they are deserved," Severus insisted. "Minerva, why did you send for me? There must be a dozen other qualified candidates for the post nearer to hand."

"I didn't want a candidate who was merely qualified. I wanted the best," Minerva replied. "Besides, I want to know that the school will be in safe hands when I retire. Hermione could probably do the job, but she's only been teaching for seven years, and it'll be another three years before her boy leaves. Albus had great faith in you, you know. You already took on the position once, when circumstances made it nearly impossible. I'd like to see how you fare when you don't have a hidden agenda to hamper you."

"That's very flattering, but I only agreed to fill in until Slughorn was up on his feet again," Severus pointed out.

"Slughorn's condition is degenerative; even if he gains some temporary respite, he'll need to retire sooner rather than later. If I must, I will use the summer holidays to find a replacement, and I probably have another year or two in me, but I'd ask you to consider it, Severus."

Severus freed his arm from her grip and opened the trapdoor to the battlements before stepping back to let Minerva through first.

"I believe, and Albus agrees with me, that between you, you and Hermione would make a fine team."

Severus sniffed and let his attention wander to the heavens for several seconds before he remarked, "She's changed."

Minerva smiled softly. "She grew up. It tends to happen to most people."

"She said she was widowed. Death Eaters?" Severus asked.

"Heavens no, boy!" Minerva remarked, as Severus rolled his eyes. Only Minerva would dare call him boy. Only Minerva would get away with it. "Well, you know that he took a job in Scotland just after they started seeing each other?"

"Minerva, I moved to the bloody Falklands precisely to avoid knowing what Potter and the Wonderbrats were doing!" Severus remarked tersely.

"And I just thought you had an unnatural fondness for flightless waterfowl," Minerva replied in kind before she continued the tale. "He was out with a trainee, flying practice, and a storm came in. The girl was hit by lightning and lost her broom. He managed to catch her before she fell, but a crosswind drove them into a cliff face. He shielded her with his body and got a cracked skull for his troubles. He got them both back to their base. By the time he Apparated back to Hogsmeade and flew back here, he seemed fine, other than a headache, but he went to sleep that night and never woke up."

Severus thought again of how Hermione had glowed when she thought of her dead husband, trying to quash down the part of him that wished a woman would ever look at him like that. That was a Portkey that had long since vanished. He turned his attention back to the sky, trying to resurrect memories of long ago astronomy lessons to put names to constellations he hadn't seen in over twenty years. He didn't notice when Minerva slipped away and went back to her patrol.

An hour passed unnoticed before he stretched and made to return to his quarters. With a flourish of his wand and a non-verbal incantation of, _"Cyclamen hederifolium album!"_ he produced a bouquet of white blooms, which he placed against the battlements before he left.

  


* * *

  


Hermione was already settled into her place at Minerva's right hand when Severus arrived for breakfast the next morning. He noted with as much amusement as he could muster so early in the morning that she Summoned up three cups of blackest Java next to his plate and waited patiently until he had finished all of them before she greeted him.

"Good morning, Severus," she said with an almost sly smile as she slid a heavy parchment envelope in his direction.

"Please tell me that this is not what is meant to make it good?"

"You mean it isn't enough that you have both my son and his cousin Fred first two periods?" Hermione asked.

"Not if either one of the two takes after their fathers," Severus remarked.

"Look at it this way, Severus. You've only got five Weasleys to contend with. You already missed out on Victoire, Dominique, Louis, Molly, James, Al—"

"Enough!" Severus protested as he slit open the envelope. "Merely the thought of that many Weasleys is giving me a migraine."

Hermione placed her hand over Severus's. "I'm not sure you want to open that then."

"If it were a howler from Molly, the envelope would be red," Severus remarked.

"It's an invitation to the birthday party, with every one of those Weasleys," she warned. "I would understand if you didn't want to, but I'd like you to come. Minerva and Filius and Hagrid and Neville are all coming as my guests."

"And the birthday girl?" Severus nodded toward the Slytherin table. "I suspect I'm not on her most wanted list."

 _"I'm_ asking. Severus... the... we." She looked down at where her hand rested over Severus's elegant fingers. "Don't make me explain here. For now, let's just say I want you to come."

Severus's eyes searched hers, seeking the smallest hint of mockery, and finding none. Instead, he found himself swathed in shreds of Hermione's memories. They were merest snippets, but they made it clear that while others had held him in disdain, the young Miss Granger had respected him and forgiven him his partiality for his own house, even when his cruelty was focused on her. She had seen beneath the façade and admired him for those times he tried to protect those in his care. She had been as deeply hurt by his perceived betrayal as by Dumbledore's death, because she had always believed he would try to do the right thing, even if, as in the case of Sirius Black, she disagreed about what the right thing might be. And her world had been set to rights when he had been vindicated, though it had left her feeling hollow and disloyal to have ever doubted. He had fooled the world, up to and including the Dark Lord, but even as a mere chit of a girl, this woman had been disappointed in herself for not believing in him.

He closed his eyes and blinked away the images. His wand was still in its sheath. He had performed no conscious act of Legilimency. He knew of only one explanation.

He gracefully bowed his head in acknowledgement of her invitation. "If you wish it, I will attend. I make no promises about the length of my stay, however."

She gently patted his hand with hers before she lifted it away entirely. "Thank you, Severus."

He had just taken a bite of his toast with lime marmalade when Hermione added. "Oh, and you might want to watch out for Fred. I don't know what he's up to, but I get the impression something's brewing."

Severus raised his eyes to the ceiling of the Great Hall as if to ask for the gift of patience. "I merely took a break from teaching. I didn't have a frontal lobotomy. I remember how to control a class."

"One more favour?" Hermione asked.

Severus lifted an eyebrow and waited silently for her request.

"If you _have_ to give them detention..."

"Any day other than Saturday?" Severus suggested and was rewarded with a dazzling smile.

  


* * *

  


"Weasley, a word, please," Hermione requested as her daughter's class packed their bags and made to leave.

Hermione closed the door behind the last of the sixth-years and then put away her wand.

"Wha-at, Mum?" her daughter demanded as soon as they were alone.

"Pip, you know what. You know I taught you to respect your teachers," Hermione started.

"He didn't respect me," the girl argued. "He hated me the minute he looked at me."

"Professor Snape doesn't always come across well. Give him a chance," Hermione insisted.

"What is it between you and him?" the redhead asked.

Hermione sighed. "There's nothing between us. Professor Snape is a good man, who made some bad choices when he wasn't much older than you are now. Your father used to say something whenever I found a new cause. 'All it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.' Maybe the professor wouldn't have made those choices if there had been more good people willing to give him an even break from the start because it was the right thing to do, rather than waiting until they could make use of the situation he got himself into. Either way, he's paid for those choices a million times over. Everyone talks about your Uncle Harry, or about the three of us and what we did. Not one bit of that would have mattered if it hadn't been for Severus Snape."

"Mum? Do you _like_ him?"

"I don't know, Pipsqueak." Hermione ruffled her daughter's hair. "He's not the sort of teacher who tries to be liked, and I haven't known him long enough in any other capacity to come to an opinion. I respect him. I admire him. I think he's the bravest man I've ever known. I _want_ to like him, but I don't know whether he'll let me get to know him well enough for that." Only that wasn't necessarily true. She'd caught a glimpse that morning of the man behind those normally unreadable eyes, and it scared her. It scared her because she'd always thought that when and if she became interested in another man, it would be someone much like her late husband. Severus had a much darker, more solitary personality, but she found herself drawn to him.

"It's _been_ three years. If you like him it isn't a crime. Dad wouldn't expect you to stay in mourning forever."

"Just give him the same respect you give the other teachers, okay?" Hermione suggested. "That's all I'm asking."

"Yes, Mum. Can I go now, or do you want me to miss break entirely?" the girl asked with a cheeky grin that almost broke Hermione's heart with its likeness to her father.

"Get your arse out of here," Hermione responded good-naturedly. "And tell Warrington I know him too well not to Imperturb the door."

  


* * *

  


Severus used his wand to point at the board. "Today, you will be making a Strengthening Solution. The instructions are on the board. If any of you produce a Potion which is graded below Acceptable, your next lesson will consist of a written exam. Be aware that I will be marking according to OWL standard, which may be somewhat stricter than the standard to which you have become accustomed. Let us hope you perform better than this morning's group of Ravenclaws and Gryffindors. You have an hour and twenty-five minutes. You may begin."

As the class stowed bags under desks, set up cauldrons and began to prepare ingredients, Severus opened the tome he had retrieved from the school library during break, flicking through the pages until he found the half-remembered section.

 _'Involuntary Legilimency is a relatively rare phenomenon, occurring only between practitioners of the Art. However, this is not the reason for its rarity. Although a skilled Legilimens can "force" memories from an unwilling subject by dint of effort, this is not the case where the phenomenon occurs unbidden. Involuntary or perhaps more accurately subconscious Legilimency occurs only where on some level both subjects wish for the exchange of thoughts and memories. It requires a high degree of openness between the participants, and though it occasionally occurs between siblings, it is most common between lovers. For this reason, the practice is also known as soul-gazing.'_

Severus gave a groan as he closed the book, his worst suspicions confirmed. Somewhere, some part of him not only wanted _a_ woman to look at him as Hermione Weasley had done when she thought of her late husband. He wanted _that_ woman to look at him in that way.

His utter humiliation was complete.

It shocked him, and yet it didn't. He couldn't claim to be unaware that the intelligent and promising girl had reminded him of Lily. Observing her growth to adulthood with Potter and Weasley had been like watching his first love taken from him all over again. Of course, he'd thought she would end up with Potter, but in a way it was worse to think that she'd given her heart to Weasley. Weasley, so callow a youth that he'd abandoned her and the Potter brat. According to Phineas Nigellus, the girl had cried herself to sleep for weeks before Weasley miraculously tracked them down.

Weasley, who'd been no more of a flyer than Severus was himself, but who the girl saw as a sporting legend. He wanted to believe that it had been blind adulation, a brief lapse in judgment by a woman who might learn to appreciate the finer qualities of a mature, intelligent partner, but it had to have been something deeper and more profound.

And what hope did _he_ have with a woman who could love Ronald Weasley?

What had she seen? How much of himself had he betrayed? And why had it happened at all?

When it came, the metaphorical _'Lumos!'_ stunned him with his brilliance. The openness, the subconscious desire to share of oneself had to be mutual.

  


* * *

  


Hermione liked to think that when occasion called for it, she could be patient. _This_ was not one of those occasions. They had parted at breakfast with extreme civility. She had hoped to see him in the staff room at morning break, but he had not appeared, nor at lunch and now not at dinner. The only explanation she could think of was that he was deliberately avoiding her. And how in Merlin's name was she supposed to work out what on Gaia's green earth was going on if he did that?

She tossed her hair, which was held at either side by a silver clip before it spilled almost to her waist, back over her shoulder and stabbed her treacle tart with her spoon.

"Something wrong?" Minerva asked.

"Nothing," Hermione answered with false lightness of tone as she stabbed the dessert again. "Nothing at all."

Neville moved from his seat on Minerva's left to take up Severus's empty chair. "It's not that bad, you know." He patted her hand gently.

"What's not that bad?" Hermione demanded.

"The make-up, the hair," Neville answered with an eloquent shrug. "Hannah went through the same phase when Alice turned seventeen. Having a grown-up daughter doesn't make you any less attractive. You'll probably be a beautiful woman into your eighties."

Hermione bristled at first as she realised where his words were going, but, by the time he finished, she couldn't help but respond to his sincerity. She gave him a rueful smile. "Thanks, Neville, It's nice of you to say so, but I'm not sure I'll really believe it until I hear it from a man who isn't happily married to someone else."

Minerva rested her hand on top of Hermione's. "My dear, I wouldn't be surprised if you occupy the fantasies of half the boys in seventh year, but if you ever doubt yourself you only need to look at any one of those photographs you have on your walls. You were loved, and a love like that doesn't just stop because he's passed on. It stays in your heart for the rest of your life."

Hermione let her spoon fall into her plate and pushed her chair away from the table. Perhaps Minerva was right. Maybe she expected too much when she hoped for a second chance at romance, but her mother had always told her that those who love deeply once, have it in them to love deeply again. She almost snorted aloud at the association of Severus Snape with the word romance, but that didn't mean that she was going to let the anti-social old ba...t avoid her like this. What had happened this morning meant something, and she was determined not to let another sun set before she found out what that something was.

  


* * *

  


Her first knock was carefully judged to sound calm and casual. When there was no reply, her second knock was peremptory. When that wasn't answered either, she began to beat the door in an unending tattoo. "Severus Snape, answer this door!" She aimed a kick at the door's baseboard with her stylish, yet comfortable high-heel, leaving a scuffmark on both waxed wood and leather. "Come out, you uptight old thing! A gentleman wouldn't do what we did this morning with a woman and then avoid her!" She hammered some more on the door and then used the most formidable weapon in her arsenal.

"You're nothing but a damned coward!" she shouted as she gave the door one last shoe-denting kick, but the door to Severus's office remained shut.

A few feet down the corridor, the door to an unused classroom opened on hinges that had been recently and carefully oiled. All five Weasleys currently attending Hogwarts peeked out as Hermione stormed off in the direction of her office. "I told you she liked him," Pip remarked, once her mother was out of earshot.

"I just want to know what the pair of them were up to this morning!" Fred added, with a wicked grin. "Uncle Harry is going to go ballistic when he hears about this!"

Fred's younger sister, Roxanne, tossed her long braided hair scornfully, making a few hundred little scarlet and gold beads clatter gently. She was almost a carbon copy of her mother, Angelina, at fourteen, except her skin was the colour of coffee almost drowned in cream. "It's not Uncle _Harry_ she's got to worry about."

Lucy, a tall and willowy strawberry blonde with a svelte jaw-length bob, stepped out into the corridor. At eighteen, the eldest and, in her own mind, the most responsible of the group, she pushed her rectangular wire-framed glasses up her nose in a nervous gesture she had picked up from her father, Percy, and straightened her blue on blue tie. "Does it matter if he makes her happy?"

"Time will tell. Right now," the last Weasley remarked, "all he's making her is pissed off. I don't think I've seen anyone who wasn't us get under her skin like that since—" His voice faltered, and it was his sister who finished his thought for him.

"Since Dad died."

  


* * *

  


Severus wore a Muggle overcoat over his customary long jacket and trousers. He should have been far too hot, but even in summer the sun never seemed to penetrate between the houses of these narrow and desolate streets. The tall shadow of the mill chimney had gone, and whatever remained of Spinner's End and the streets parallel to it had all been sealed off behind plywood fences. Signs advertised the industrial estate due to open in a year's time.

Severus didn't follow any planned route, but his steps led him through an old playground, along a tow path and on toward the more prosperous area of town. It was decades since he had called this sad bequest of the long-gone industrial revolution his home, but tonight he walked the streets, some ravaged by neglect, others decorated with the bright scars of new and unfamiliar buildings and landmarks. He knew that he was truly outcast.

Fifty years ago the large Victorian houses where Lily Evans had lived had been home to bank managers and higher-ranking civil servants, to social-climbers and the downwardly mobile of the upper classes. Now, most of the shops carried signs in Urdu, Hindi or some other language of the Indian subcontinent as well as English. Lily no more belonged in this altered landscape than he did, and so he found an empty alleyway and Apparated to where he had known he would ultimately go.

  


* * *

  


Hermione fumed as she pulled open her desk drawer and extracted her own version of The Marauders' Map. Harry's had passed down through the family. Now that the next generation of Potters had left the school, it was, she suspected, in the hands of Fred and Roxanne, whose father had given it to Harry in the first place. However, anything a group of teenaged boys could do, Hermione could do better. Her version included the Room of Requirement, and unless those using it specifically stated they should be undetectable, it also showed its occupants. It showed the teachers' classrooms, offices and store rooms, though not their private quarters. She had had no wish to know what her fellow teachers did behind closed doors, until now. It showed house-elves and pets. It showed all of the Forbidden Forest, the centaurs and unicorns, acromantulae and bowtruckles, and instead of the little moving dots on Harry's map, hers showed little sets of footprints.

She pored over the map, from highest tower to lowest dungeon. She wasn't overly surprised to find all five Weasleys together and probably heading in the direction of the Room of Requirement. The cousins were closer than many brothers and sisters, and with two of them in Ravenclaw, one in Slytherin and two in Gryffindor, there were a limited number of places where they could all congregate. However, she found no sign of Severus Snape, proving to her satisfaction that he must, in fact, be in his private quarters ignoring her summons.

She stormed through to the small pantry where she kept a few personal supplies. On one of the shelves there was a small wine rack, just large enough for six bottles. She pulled a bottle halfway out of the rack, considering the cheap Lambrusco she had taken to drinking over the past three years because its alcohol content was so low that she could drink a bottle on her own and remain relatively unimpaired. Then, she pushed it back in, removing a dusty bottle of Chablis instead. From another cupboard she took a bottle of Sober-Up Potion and set it on her coffee table, where she could grab it easily if a pupil came to her door. On further consideration she went back to her pantry and pulled out a packet of Jaffa Cakes to go with the wine. She fetched her heavy, long towelling 'teacher' robe and draped it over the end of her sofa, where it, too, was readily available if she were summoned in her capacity as head of house, and then she padded into her bedroom where she stripped away the layers she had added for him.

From an eight by ten photo frame resting on her bedside cabinet, a redhead gave her a wry smile and blew her a kiss, and Hermione turned away before he could see the tears start to fall, wishing with all her heart that life was simple again and that she could have his calming arms around her while they shared the wine between them, instead of making do with a lonely bubble bath.

  


* * *

  


_N.B. According to my research into 'The Meaning of Flowers', cyclamen is generally taken to symbolise resignation and goodbye._


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus returns to the castle and finds out he had a visitor while he was away.

  
  


Severus perused his appearance in the mirror inside his wardrobe door as he hung his coat back up on its hanger. His hair was streaked with grey at his temples and was just as lank as ever. In the Muggle world he would probably pass for between forty-five and fifty, he supposed, but he would never be described as handsome.

Hermione didn't look a day over thirty, and yet...

"No emergencies while I was out, Silvie?" he asked.

A bespectacled house-elf looked up from the book he'd been sitting cross-legged on Severus's desk to read. "Did I fetch you?" he asked.

"No."

"Then there weren't any emergencies." He turned back to his book, and Severus almost didn't hear his next few words. "Just that mad Arithmancy teacher yelling and screaming."

"Sil-vie!" Severus crooned in a threatening tone which worried the elf not one jot. "What do you mean, 'Just that mad Arithmancy teacher yelling and screaming.'?"

"You're the one that said I was only to get you if one of your pupils needed you. You didn't say anything about howling harridans."

"Just tell me exactly what she said..." 

  


* * *

  


Hermione took a deep breath and reached for the nearby potion when the knock sounded at her door. She took great care to ennunciate her question clearly. "Who is it?"

"It's Severus... Snape."

"How many other Severuses do you think I know?" she asked, pushing her towelling robe, which she had been using as a blanket, onto the floor. She swung her legs off the sofa and drew herself upright, tottering to the door that separated her office from her private quarters. "Close the outer door and come through, Severus," she said. "And better put an Imperturbable on here, too. Far too many extendable ears around, and I seem to have misplaced my wand."

Severus eyed the skimpy silver-grey satin slip which was all she wore with a raised eyebrow. "You seem to have misplaced your clothes as well, and your hair's damp. Are you drunk?"

Hermione blinked owlishly up at him. "Might be?"

"Why?" he asked, schooling himself to keep his distance so long as she was in this unpredictable mood. 

"Because I got fed up of waiting for someone to share the bottle with." Suddenly, as if this calamity was his fault, she focused all her attention on him. "Why are you avoiding me?"

"I needed to pay a visit to the library during morning break. That led to my spending my lunch hour marking, in order to be free to pursue some personal matters earlier this evening. I'm here now, am I not?" Severus asked.

"Only so you can tell me how insufferable I am," Hermione insisted. "Pip says you acted like you hated her as soon as you saw her. Only you couldn't hate _her,_ so you must hate me."

Severus sighed. "We got off on the wrong foot. I act like I hate everyb—" His jaw dropped mid-word, and he stared at the family portrait that looked down at him from the wall. _"That's_ not Weasley."

"What's not Weasley?" Hermione demanded, squinting at the photograph which had been taken shortly after her son had been born. "It's _my_ Weasleys."

Severus's head flicked between the photograph and the woman in front of him several times before he scanned the whole room, finding several more photographs of the same smiling redhead. "B-but that's _Charlie_ Weasley!"

"Well, why did you _think_ we call our daughter Charlotte, dimwit?" 

"But I thought you married Ron!" Severus insisted.

Hermione giggled and collapsed back onto her sofa, pointing at him. "You thought—"

Severus's brows furrowed together in agitation. This was not going at all how he had hoped. "I thought you married Ron. Yes, ha ha, very funny. Last I heard it was _him_ you were crying yourself to sleep over." 

"And that's why Ron and I would never have worked," Hermione announced as if she had just produced the irrefutable winning argument. "That and timing. We had lousy timing. Not like Charlie." 

Severus sighed and picked up the potion bottle from the table, checking the label to confirm his suspicions as to its nature. "Please would you drink this?" he begged. "I'd rather like to come to some sort of understanding tonight, and I doubt that's likely to happen if you remain intoxicated."

She glared at him suspiciously. "What sort of understanding? You're going to go all... hidey again and say we should pretend it didn't happen, aren't you?"

It was the final straw. Severus dropped onto the sofa beside her, leaned forward to grab her legs and swing them over his thighs and scooped an arm behind her back. Then, before she had time to realise she was now sitting on his lap, he was kissing her, savouring the echoes of crisp dry wine on her palate. Her arms wound around his neck, and she was kissing him back, with more enthusiasm than he had dared to dream.

When he regained sufficient control to draw back, his name spilled from her lips in an aching sigh. "Severus." He didn't think he'd heard anything so intoxicating in his life.

"Hermione," he pleaded, "thanks to your tirade earlier, every house-elf in the school already thinks I've stolen your virtue and abandoned you like a cad. I'm damned if I'm going to add seducing a woman incapable of giving proper consent to my purported list of sins."

"How do the house-elves know?"

"The house-elves know every damn thing that happens in this place," Snape replied in exasperation. "Drink the potion... please. And then we need to talk." 

"Jacket."

"Pardon?"

"I'll drink the potion if you get rid of the straitjacket." She gave him what he assumed would be a challenging look if she were sober. "It _does_ come off, right?"

Severus flinched and then tilted her face to his, looking deeply into her eyes. "The Mark."

Hermione initiated their second kiss, slower, gentler and less frantic than their first. "Is part of you," she whispered when she lifted her head. 

  


* * *

  


Severus sat the mug down on the small dining table in front of her, placing his own coffee at the place setting opposite. "Drink. It'll offset the queasiness from the potion."

Hermione sniffed at the aromatic blend. "Ginger and citrus?"

"Ten points for Gryffindor, Miss Granger. Now will you just drink it?"

"I'm not sure you're allowed to give house points to members of staff. Come here," she instructed.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a bossy little thing?" Severus asked, though he came to stand beside her chair.

"Often," she answered as she knelt on her chair to reach his neck, undoing the knot of his cravat and loosening the drawstring fastening of his shirt until she could see down past his collarbone. "You'll get used to it." She darted a flirtatious glance at him through her lashes. "And, somehow, I don't think I have the monopoly on that trait in this relationship."

Severus let his eyelids drop closed and took several calming breaths through his nose as Hermione unfastened his right cuff and rolled the sleeve back several turns. When she reached for his left sleeve, however, his hand reached out to grab hers and pull it away.

"Hermione..."

"Severus, if this conversation goes the way I hope it will, then some day soon you'll lie naked with me. I need to know that you can relax, that you're willing to let me in behind those formidable walls of yours. Voldemort pretty much told the whole world you were no blushing virgin, and it's not the first time I've seen it. I was right there when you showed it to Cornelius Fudge." 

This time when she reached for his wrist, he made no protest, but he watched her intently, waiting for the slightest hint of revulsion. None came. She turned the sleeve back to the same height as the other, leaving the Dark Mark half-hidden, half-visible and then she lifted his forearm to her lips. It took all Severus's courage not to flinch away.

"Severus, I don't scare easily."

"Forgive me if I do," Severus requested. He took the seat opposite her and turned his gaze on the ebony liquid in his cup. "My sexual experience may be a matter of common record. However, while I believe I am a capable bed partner, I am not accustomed to casual intimacy."

"I guessed." Hermione tried to take any edge from the words with a gentle smile. She took a sip of the herbal tea Severus had prepared. "You wanted to talk. Where do we begin?"

Severus smirked. "I believe that you were the one trying to kick my door down... or so I heard."

Hermione glared at him. "This once, I'll let you get away with that, but somewhere along the line you're going to have to give up your spy tricks and answer a question or two instead of always turning them around. It's called give and take."

Severus lifted a sardonic brow. "Alright, I shall begin." He calmly returned his coffee to its coaster. "As to what happened between us this morning, my understanding is this. We are each on some level drawn to the other. We each trust the other enough to leave ourselves vulnerable. You do not love me. I do not love you. If one or both of us chose to walk away at this point, no harm would have been done, but we are both receptive to the idea of such a relationship. Do you concur?"

"Brutal... but accurate," Hermione agreed. "I think we need to put this into perspective a little, though. I _am_ drawn to you, in a way I haven't been drawn to anyone else since Charlie died. I haven't kissed a man the way I kissed you for three years. I want you, Severus, and if this had happened before Charlie, when I only had myself to consider, we'd be in my bed instead of sitting at this table."

"I'm not sure I follow you." Severus's voice was carefully neutral, his eyelids drooping to almost cover his eyes while he tried to work out if she was saying this was no more than the scratching of an itch to her.

Sensing his withdrawal, Hermione stretched across the table to rest her fingers on top of his. "I'm saying, that if I was the only one who might get hurt if you choose to pack up and leave when Slughorn gets out of hospital, then that would be an acceptable risk." Warmth flooded Hermione's stomach as Severus twined his fingertips with hers and let his hand follow hers back to the centre of the table. "We'll leave Minerva out of this for the moment and what she'd do if she found out two of her teachers were having an affair. I'm not looking for a Charlie-clone, and I don't think my children are either, but I also need to know that you can all get along."

"That is no more than I expected," Severus agreed. "I'm not known for my way with children, but I can make such overtures as are not contrary to my nature."

Hermione smiled. "Just think of them as short people, get to know them, and above all, be honest. I like them. Maybe you will, too. I guess that settles the Minerva issue, as well."

"The Minerva issue?" 

"Well, as I see it, there are two options with Minerva," Hermione began, trying to gauge Severus's reaction to each suggestion as she gave it. "We pretend in public that we can barely tolerate each other, in which case we might manage to meet in secret at least for a while... or we're up front about the fact we're seeing each other, in which case she'll watch both of us like a hawk and find excuses to Floo us at all hours of the day and night to check we're in our respective quarters." 

"But if you wish me to be honest with your children and to get to know them, that would rule out the first option."

"I know it's a lot to ask." 

Severus took his hand back, using both to turn his mug in place. "Hermione, would you like to know where I was tonight while you were yelling abuse at my door?"

"Only if you want to tell me."

His hands cradled his mug as if needing its warmth, but his eyes lifted to hers. "I went home, back to where Lily and I were brought up, and then I went to Godric's Hollow, to the cottage and the memorial and the graveyard. I laid a bunch of flowers on her grave, and I told her I wouldn't be coming back. After this morning, it felt like the time had come to put away childish things."

"Severus." Hermione was around the table and in his lap before the last syllable fell from her lips in a husky whisper. Her right hand tangled in his hair while her left caressed the sharp lines of his cheek and ear and drew him in. 

He smiled at her, their faces mere inches apart. "You are as impetuous as a kitten, but there is another matter we must discuss. Hermione, if I stay, it is likely to be to the detriment of your career. Minerva has already intimated that were I to leave, you would be next in line for her position. If I stay I do not even know what might happen with your current status of deputy head."

"Acting deputy head," Hermione corrected, resting her forehead against Severus's while she continued to run her hand through his shoulder-length hair. "I think Minerva would be amenable to splitting the extra duties and the extra remuneration until she retires... if that would suit you. She would need to run it past the board of directors, but I don't see a problem. As for the headship, when she does retire, you're welcome to it."

"But it's—"

Hermione raised a finger to his lips and moved back enough to allow them both a clear view of the other's face. "A huge honour, great privilege, blah, blah, blah?"

"Yes."

"For you it is. It's no more than the recognition that's your due, and it would be a tremendous boost for Slytherin. It would allow you time to continue with your research." She brushed her lips to the tip of his nose, and almost laughed at the surprise in his eyes. "Not for me. Why do you think Filius has never applied for the job? Or Neville? He's been teaching far longer than I have. Severus, I like teaching. I like interacting with the kids. I love seeing the moment when something just clicks into place for them. Of course, I'm teaching an optional subject, so all of my pupils have _chosen_ to take my class, not like some... Besides, if you left Hogwarts so that I could be headmistress, think how much trouble it would be to find cover if I wanted maternity leave somewhere down the line."

Severus's eyes widened in astonishment and then took on a decidedly possessive glow. "You would consider doing that... for me?" 

"That depends how long this courtship thing takes," Hermione teased. "Once I'm over fifty-five that puts me in the high risk range." She grabbed Severus's shoulders as he hefted her into his arms and stood up, carrying her toward the bedroom.

"Severus, what about Minerva and the kids?" she protested weakly.

"Minerva can mind her own damn business what goes on behind closed doors if she doesn't want to be running this school on her own for the next twenty years," he said as he used a heel to shut the door behind them, "and if I could charm the Dark Lord for years, I can win over a couple of teenagers."

He tossed Hermione on the bed, and as she bounced, he reached out to turn the photograph of her late husband face down. Those in the living room he could live with. This one would have to move. As he flipped it, the man in the picture gave him a blatant wink, but Severus had no more than a fraction of a second to consider this as Hermione reached up and grabbed him by his shirt lapels, pulling him down on top of her. 

"Shh, my beautiful one," he soothed as he ran a slender hand along her satin-covered side. "This time shouldn't be rushed." 

"Severus, if you keep using that tone of voice, I'll be finished before you've even started," Hermione complained as he rolled them onto their sides and brushed soft kisses up the side of her neck until he reached her earlobe.

"I doubt my words have a greater effect on you than hearing my name on your lips has on me," he whispered.

"Severus? Have you still got your wand?" Hermione gasped as he nibbled at her ear and his fingers skated over the bare skin of her shoulders, back and arms.

"Mmmmhh," Severus agreed as he buried his nose in the dark riot of her hair, inhaling its scent like a connoisseur.

"Then close the curtains, light the lamp, and let me see you naked."

He rolled to the edge of the bed and drew his wand from a pocket that ran down the outer seam of his trousers. With a flick he lit the oil lamp on her bedside cabinet, but he tossed his wand to lie next to Charlie's photograph and rose to his feet, closing the curtains without magic. He stood with his back to her as he pulled the shirt off over his head, letting the lamp illuminate the criss-crossing welts which covered his entire back and extended to the flesh covered by his trousers.

He toed off his boots and then silently unfastened his dress pants, sliding down those, underwear and socks, all into one heap on the floor. He waited as she stared at the disfiguring marks of countless beatings layered one over the other.

Then, there were arms around his waist and her hair was brushing against his back, her bare skin pressing against his, the satin slip also gone. When he turned, her eyes glistened with tears. 

Hermione barely had time to recognise the near-perfection of his full-frontal view through fogged eyes. There was perhaps a little excess fat, a very slight sag here and there, but there was also muscle definition in the arms and the shoulders that would have been the envy of men forty years his junior. 

"I've upset you," he whispered. "I'll put the shirt back on."

"Don't." She reached out and grabbed his hand before he could pick up the white cotton, guiding it to rest, instead, on the curve of her hip. She used both hands to frame his face and make him look at her. "I'm not upset at you. I'm upset at what's been done to you, and I'm amazed all over again at the strength you must have shown. You're a remarkable man, Severus Snape. Now, come to bed." She backed slowly away, never letting go, and he came with her until they both tumbled onto the mattress. He rolled them onto their sides straight away as if afraid of crushing her. 

"You're sure?" he asked. "Once we do this..."

"You'll be mine," Hermione finished for him. 

"I was going to say that I don't think I'll be able to let you go."

"Be kind to my children and you'll never have to..." Her eyes dropped to his semi-erect genitals. "Severus," she purred, and his flesh twitched in reaction. 

"Damn you, woman!" He claimed her mouth with a ferocity he'd not intended to show in their first encounter. 

She arched her body against his, one hand tangling in his hair, while the other snaked around his side, her fingers absently tracing the raised scars.

"I knew you were a witch," Severus gasped when he came up for air. "I never realised you were an enchantress." 

Hermione smiled a knowing smile and crawled to the centre of the bed, where she raised herself up on her knees and beckoned Severus to join her.

She stretched up to press a kiss to his forehead. "This belongs to me," she whispered, "and these eyes belong to me." She dropped a kiss on each of his eyelids. "This nose belongs to me." She kissed its bridge halfway down and its tip. "And this oh-so-clever mouth..." The tip of her tongue had barely laved the seam of his lips when he opened up to her. Bitter coffee combined with sharp citrus. Their breaths mingled, and Hermione clung to his shoulders to maintain the kiss until lack of air forced her to break away. "Oh, definitely," she gasped. "That mouth definitely belongs to me."

"And..." Severus whispered against her collarbone, where he placed a tender kiss as Hermione hyperventilated helplessly. "What..." The tip of the narrow white scar Dolohov had left between her breasts. "If..." Down. "I..." Down. "Do..." Down. "Not..." Across. "Wish..." His lips closed on her nipple, teasing, sucking, his tongue tracing wet circles, and finally his teeth biting down on the sensitive flesh, just short of the pressure needed to break the skin, and Hermione trembled in his arms as she moaned his name. "For another master?" 

"I'm not offering to be that..." Hermione leaned over backward, pulling Severus over with her. "I'm offering to be your home."

His eyes fixed on hers, and Hermione wondered how anyone could ever have said they were cold. "Guide me," he asked.

Hermione grabbed a couple of pillows and slid them under her hips. Then, she reached between their bodies and positioned his tip at her centre, all without looking away. 

Severus slid home, hard and deep, before she expected it, and her muscles tensed in a spasm of pain and pleasure. "I'm sorry," he whispered, though the pain was no fault of his. "I'll make it better. I promise." At first he simply held himself in position, propped up on his elbows, his hands caressing whatever parts of her they could reach. As long-unused muscles stretched and relaxed around him, slowly he began to rotate his hips against hers. When she wrapped her legs around him, ankles crossing at the small of his back, he finally began to move his hips in and out. Never once did his eyes leave hers, not until her whole body bowed and she screamed his name as she threw her head back, the combination of the cry and her spasms drawing him to completion so soon after that it was nearly indistinguishable. 

  


* * *

  


Hermione couldn't resist running her fingers through his hair. It was a sensuous pleasure she'd never been accustomed to, though she suspected she'd enjoy it even more if she could get him in the shower with her later. 

"Is it so fascinating?" Severus asked, his arms wrapped around her in what might be the afterglow, or perhaps just another pause between rounds.

Hermione smiled softly. "I've never had a lover with long hair before. I think I like it."

"What about Weasley the Younger? I seem to recall Phineas saying you were all in need of a good haircut."

"No points to Slytherin for subtlety," Hermione teased with a grin. "Ron and I were never lovers. We just never quite got there. After the battle, the Weasleys sort of closed ranks and went into mourning. There were official interviews and debriefings, and I stayed with Harry at Grimmauld place while all that was going on, but then I had to go to Australia to find my parents. By the time I came back, Ron and Harry had joined the Aurors. Kingsley offered me a job in any Ministry department I chose, but if I had done that, I'd have been stuck there. I'd never have the proper qualifications to back me up if I wanted to do anything different, so, when Hogwarts opened up again, I went back and got my NEWTs.

"We wrote to begin with, or I wrote and every once in a while I got a reply, saying how busy they'd been and how they'd helped track down this Death Eater or that one." She shrugged. "I was approached by the University of Lichtenstein and I decided to go. You probably know how hard it is to get into further education in the wizarding world. I just couldn't pass it up. I met someone while I was there, and, well, Ron pretty much stopped writing altogether, though I'd hear about him through Harry. 

"When I finished my degree, I took a job working as a Cursebreaker, and Mikhail and I went our separate ways. I think, by then, if Ron and I had ever had a time, it had passed. We'd gone completely different ways. Anyway, by the time I did my mandatory overseas stretch, and came back to work for Gringotts London Arithmancy department, he'd been well and truly hooked. Mum and Dad went ski-ing one Christmas. Molly asked me to the Burrow, and _there_ was Charlie."

"It can't have been the first time you met him, though," Severus commented, his fingers skimming up and down Hermione's side.

"No," she agreed, "but most of those other times it was a couple of days here and there, and there was always other stuff going on, the World Cup, or one wedding or another, and it was the first time where the age difference didn't seem to matter. I guess with everybody else paired off we were thrown together more... and he listened. I think that was what really drew me in. He'd let me talk about stuff, personal stuff, work stuff, politics, and he didn't always say much, but then he'd make a comment or ask a question that went right to the heart of whatever it was. He'd made sacrifices for his career, so he understood where I was coming from, and when he talked about things he loved, he just seemed to light on up.

"The holidays ended and he went back to Romania, but we wrote to each other for a while." She gave a wistful smile. "And we wrote a lot. We used our holidays to visit, and, then, when the director's job came up at the Hebridean reserve, it all just fell into place."

"Dare I ask who young Weasley _did_ end up married to?" Severus asked with a teasing smile.

Hermione grinned. "The most beautiful girl who would have him."

Severus raised a sceptical eyebrow.

"You'll see tomorrow," Hermione assured him. "She's good for him. They make a far better couple than the two of us - him and me - would ever have made, but you should see it rather than have me explain."

"I can hardly wait," Severus drawled, but though his tone was biting, the lustre in his eyes made Hermione feel warm inside.

"Don't be mean," she told him.

"If I'm going to have to summon up an apology for George, and probably Molly and Arthur, the least you can do is let me poke fun at the others," Severus protested. "I'm sure they'll have plenty of scathing words of their own for me."

"Not in front of me, they won't," Hermione retorted, "not unless they want first hand knowledge of some of those curses I learned about in Egypt."

"I thought _I_ was supposed to defend _your_ honour," Severus replied.

Hermione let her gaze travel up and down their naked bodies and laughed. "Great job, so far." She hooked a leg over his hip as his hand dropped to her behind and pulled her closer.

"Hussy!" 

"Lech!" Their lips met in a tender kiss, a slow kindling of renewed desire.

"Jezebel," Severus whispered as Hermione tilted her head back to allow him greater access to the tender flesh of her neck.

"Libertine. Sev-er-us..." 

  


* * *

  


"Start running the water. I'll be through in a second." Hermione stood on tip-toe to place a kiss on his cheek.

Severus raised an enquiring eyebrow, but he didn't press the issue when Hermione gave him a gentle push toward the bathroom. 

Hermione quickly pulled towels and fresh sheets from her dresser. A few flicks of Severus's wand switched clean bedding for soiled, and her pool-like bath was no more than a third full when she descended the first few steps leading into it and took a seat directly behind Severus, stretching out a slim, if short, leg to either side of his back. As she waited for the bath to fill, she started to work her way down and across his shoulders, kissing each individual scar as she had wanted to since she first saw them.

Severus gave a sigh. "You can ask if you want, provided the answers remain private between us."

"How about you tell me when I go wrong?" Hermione suggested tentatively. "These scars were made while you were still growing, and they were the result of numerous beatings. Canings?" When Severus didn't contradict her, she continued. "I'm guessing your father did it, and your mother didn't use her magic to stop him or to heal you. He was probably scared of you both, and he probably did everything he could to beat your mum down. By the time your magic began to show itself, she was probably so psychologically damaged that she couldn't fight him, not even for her child."

"Possibly," Severus conceded. "Or maybe she just didn't care that much. Neither one of them tried to hide the fact the only reason they got married was because she was pregnant. Perhaps if I had been a more appealing child..."

"And perhaps if you had been loved and happy, you would have been more engaging. You're a teacher. You know there are plenty of happy kids who're a bit... goofy-looking until they get older," Hermione pointed out. "I used to wonder how you could love Lily and still get involved with Voldemort. Now, I think I know. She was the one person in your life holding you back from buying into everything he had to offer, and she turned her back on you."

"I gave her good reason," Severus insisted.

"I wasn't there, so I'm not going to say she was right or she was wrong," Hermione rushed to say, even though she privately thought Lily fickle. "I'm not going to say you deserved to be abandoned or you didn't. I'm just saying that in your shoes... Oh, Severus, knowing a bit more about your past doesn't change who you are now, or the things you did when I was a pupil here that made me admire you."

"Hermione..." He twisted in her arms and grabbed her by the nape of her neck, drawing her into a deep kiss. "Shut up." He used his grip to make her read the truth in his eyes. "You don't need to ramble on in the hope that if you find the right thing to say, then I won't bite your head off. I gave you leave to open the topic. If you are to be subjected to that view on a regular basis, then you had a right to know how those scars came to be there. However, I long ago came to terms with the fact that nothing can make what I did right. For good and for ill, the past is written. I don't ask you to make excuses for the man I once was. It is more than enough that knowing all you do, you are here."

"I'm here," Hermione affirmed, as she broke free of his embrace and swam a couple of strokes to reach the bath taps and turn them off. "And so is my shampoo." She beckoned him toward her with an index finger.

"I'll just need to oil it in the morning. It's too fine not to. It goes everywhere otherwise," Severus warned her as he waded out to meet her in the water that reached his lower ribs. 

"We'll worry about that in the morning," Hermione said as she took the bottle down from the bath's edge and tipped some out into her palm. "You're not twenty-one any more, Severus. You don't need to scare off the pupils. The age difference will do that for you now."

"Well, if I'm so off-putting..." Severus retorted with a scowl.

"I'm a Gryffindor. We don't scare easily," She gave him a blatant grin. "Get used to it."

"Is there anything else you plan to change about me?" he asked in a sarcastic tone.

"Turn around," she instructed, rubbing her palms together and then massaging the shampoo into Severus's hair when he did. "There is one other thing..." she suggested. "Let's just say that if you let me straighten and whiten your teeth _before_ you meet my parents, you'll save yourself having to go through polishing and braces." 

"No Muggle is going to convince me to do anything I don't want to," Severus retorted.

"Duck."

Severus sank to his knees in the deep water and leaned back as Hermione stroked the shampoo from his hair, scooping up handfuls of clean water to trickle over those spots at the waterline. She kissed his forehead and whispered, "Done." 

"Then do it for me," she asked. "My parents are both dentists, and I'll be the one who gets stuck in the middle."

"For you," he conceded grudgingly as he stood back up.

"Look at it this way," Hermione proposed. "People like Harry and Ron never need to know. They'll only be able to tell if you smile."

Unexpectedly, Severus laughed outright at this and ducked Hermione's head under the water's surface. "Your turn," he told her as he reached for the shampoo bottle. 

* * *

  


Fred and Roxanne paused just inside the portrait hole. "Check the map first. We don't want to walk straight into McGonagall."

Fred passed his share of the fireworks into his sister's arms and took the Marauder's Map from his pocket. "We're clear. McGonagall's in her office. Filch is down in the Trophy Room, and his grotty beast is in the dungeons."

"What about Snape?" Roxanne asked. "Dad used to say he roamed the corridors at all hours."

"Damn! He's not in his rooms."

"Well, you better work out where he is _before_ we walk into him," Roxanne told her brother.

Fred scanned the map more closely, and then burst out laughing. "He's not going to be a problem, Rox."

"What?" his sister demanded.

Fred folded up the map which showed the location where Severus Snape was currently sleeping his first restful night within Hogwarts walls in several decades. "Trust me. You don't want to know." 


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the morning after and Severus wakes up alone...

  
  


_For iulia_linnea_

Half-awake, Severus reached out for her, only to find the bed was empty except for him. His thought that perhaps the entire last three days had been a fever dream of some sort and he was back in his solitary farmhouse, sent a jolt of panic through him that roused him instantly.

The unfamiliar four-poster, with its hangings of cream and terra-cotta, rapidly dispelled his fears. "Hermione?"

"Damn!" The voice and sounds of movement came from the other room. "Stay there! I was going to bring you breakfast in bed."

Severus pushed his hair back from his face and squinted at the clock on the bedroom's mantelpiece. Soon, he knew he was going to have to give in and get some glasses, but he hadn't quite got around to it yet, and it took him a few seconds to force his eyes to focus. "It's five in the morning, woman. Come back to bed."

"I can't. I'll explain in a minute."

Severus sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He spotted his clothes, neatly folded, on a chair near the window and quickly donned underwear, trousers, shirt, socks and boots. He was just about to go through to the main room and see exactly what it was that Hermione _was_ doing, when she appeared in the doorway, dressed in the same tiny grey slip she had worn the previous evening covered by an equally short matching robe, and carrying a tray. 

"Severus." The downward lilt at the end of his name made her disappointment obvious. 

He tossed his head back, and his hair resettled into a curtain on either side of his face for about five seconds before strands began to fall back in front of his face. "Women's minutes can sometimes last a very long time. I thought it would be quicker to get up."

She backed up. "Come through, then, you stubborn old... man."

"I do need to pay a visit to the bathroom, as well," Severus argued, turning in that direction when he left the bedroom and closing the door behind him.

"You didn't need to get dressed every other time you got up for that in the middle of the night," she muttered at the door as she spread the breakfast things out on the coffee table in front of the sofa. "Years to get Charlie to stop walking around naked after the kids were born, and now this one insists on playing the Puritan when there's no one else here. He just better wash his hands and put the seat back down." 

"I heard that!" Severus grumbled through the door.

"Good!"

A minute or so later when Severus emerged from the room, he held the door open to show the lowered toilet seat, and then he held up his hands like a child being inspected by his mother before dinner. "Now, do you want to tell me what I _really_ did to upset you?"

"No," Hermione admitted. "I guess I will, though. Drink your coffee." She passed him a huge mug with a picture of Eeyore on one side of it. "You took the first chance you could to retreat behind your walls."

"Because I got dressed?" Severus asked, giving the donkey a scornful glance before he took a long sip of the dark coffee. "I would have happily stayed in bed, if you had been willing to join me, but I assumed you had some reason for getting up at five."

"I had every intention of joining you. I wanted you to know that, while I need you to leave before there's a chance of the kids showing up for our pre-breakfast birthday breakfast, I'm not trying to push you away... but you pushed me away first." 

Severus set his mug back down on the table. "Come here, you silly woman." He tapped his thigh. 

Hermione climbed onto his lap, and Severus claimed her mouth with a blistering kiss. 

"I am who I am," Severus pointed out. "I cannot change overnight, and I _am_ more comfortable with my defects hidden, but I'm not stupid enough to risk losing you. If you think I would try to push you away, then I obviously haven't managed to convey the smallest inkling of how unique last night was in my experience. Now, why don't you tell me what a pre-breakfast birthday breakfast is?"

"Well, when we go down to the Great Hall, Pip and Will and I all sit at separate tables, so whenever there's a family occasion, we meet here first and have something to eat and, in this case, Will and I give Pip her gifts." Hermione shrugged. "Nothing fancy... I was hoping that I might be able to Floo you while the kids are here and we could tell them, well..."

"That you have given me permission to pay court?" Severus suggested, pushing his hair back from his face again.

Hermione smiled at the antiquated turn of phrase. "Yes, that, and to lay out the ground rules. No favouritism in the classroom and so on. Anyway, I thought it would be better if I summon you from your quarters to join us, rather than have the kids arrive and find you in my bed."

"That would probably set things off to an even worse start than putting your daughter in detention," Severus remarked dryly. "Very well. We shall inform the children before breakfast, and I shall tell Minerva I wish to speak to her after we leave the Great Hall. You can probably expect to be summoned to her office shortly thereafter." 

"No doubt," Hermione agreed. "I think the only question is whether she kicks you out first in an attempt to divide and conquer or hauls us both up in front of her desk together."

"And does that worry you?" Severus asked.

Hermione reached into the pocket of her robe and brought out a black ponytail band, which she used to secure Severus's hair at the back of his head. "Minerva is a pussy cat."

Severus laughed and kissed her again. "Later, I may remind you that you said that." 

"Now, about that dental work..." 

  


* * *

  


"Mum!" Pip threw her arms around her mother. "It's gorgeous. Where on earth did you find it?"

"In Edinburgh, summer before last." Hermione stroked her daughter's hair before she stepped out of her embrace. "As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to get it and keep it for today."

Pip stared again at her left wrist, where she wore the watch that was the traditional coming of age gift in the wizarding world. The timepiece's mother of pearl face was surrounded by a band of marcasite about a quarter of an inch wide. Holding that band in their teeth, at the six and twelve positions were two tiny silver Fireball heads. The strap, again studded with marcasite, was segmented to simulate the sinuous serpentine bodies of the beasts. "I can't believe you've kept this for nearly two years. It's perfect. Dad would have loved it."

"Yes, he would have," Hermione admitted, "but it's not what he would have bought you. That's the box in the corner."

"Mu-um!" Pip chided, knowing as soon as she saw the dimensions of the box what it contained. "You shouldn't have. We're a one-income family."

"Your dad didn't exactly skimp on his life insurance, honey," Hermione stated. "And that money is for days like today. Will picked it out, and I paid for it, but it's from your dad."

"Dad did just fine on an old Cleansweep 5," Pip continued to argue, "and Uncle George used it for another five years after that." 

"Yeah," her brother agreed, "but that's why people keep saying Uncle Harry was better than Dad. Because in every Quidditch match bar one that Uncle Harry played in, he had the fastest broom on the field. That'd make anyone half-decent look good. You're gonna show them what you can really do." 

Pip raised her eyes to the ceiling. "Well, I might if I wasn't stuck in detention."

Her brother picked up the box and set it on the table in front of her, next to the copy of 'Potion Making for Professionals' which had been his gift to his sister. "Open it! You can always squeeze in half an hour between breakfast and going to see Snape."

Pip pulled the lid off the box and found a sheaf of parchment sealed with dark pink ribbon and sealing wax on top of the broom that took up most of the box. "What's this, Mum?"

"It's the paperwork for the trust your father and I intended you to have. Roughly speaking, it's a quarter of his estate. You get full access at twenty-five, but in the meantime, it's there to provide for your education, or to give you a deposit for your first home, anything sensible like that. You just have to run it past me and your Uncle Bill." 

"Damn," Pip said with feigned humour as she blinked away the tears from her eyes. "I guess that means I don't get to leave school before my NEWTs like Uncle George, then?"

"Not a hope, darling," Hermione confirmed. 

"Mum?" Will began.

"Yes, honey. You get the same when you turn seventeen."

Pip set the documents to one side and stared at the broom she'd been given. "Dad would have been a holy terror with a broom like this," she said fondly.

"Just try not to scare me too much," Hermione petitioned. "He'd be proud of you, Pip. He always said you had the perfect Seeker's build and that you'd surpass him before you were done." 

"Ezekiel Smith would wet himself if you were playing today," Will said despondently.

"Look, kids, there's something else I need to talk to you about before we go downstairs."

"Snape?" Will asked.

"Professor Snape," Hermione corrected. "And what makes you think it's him?"

"Let's see," Pip teased. "Binns is a ghost, Firenze is anatomically incompatible, Uncle Neville is married, I can't exactly picture you with Uncle Filius, and all the other teachers are women. It could be Hagrid or Filch, but I'm going to go with Professor Snape. And, by the way, what _did_ the two of you do together yesterday morning?"

"Yeah, Mum," Will joined in. "Curious minds want to know."

"Have you two been interrogating house-elves or something?" Hermione asked, blushing profusely. "Look, if you must know, we shared an act of subconscious Legilimency."

"Wow!" Pip gasped in the same moment her brother spoke. 

"Huh?"

"That's pretty deep," Pip remarked.

 _"What's_ deep?" Will asked.

"Haven't you read 'Magic of the Mind'?" Pip countered, drawing a smile from her mother. 

"It's not even on the curriculum," Will argued. 

"It's _on_ Mum's bookshelf," Pip pointed out. "And even if you haven't read that, then the phenomenon of subconscious Legilimency is a cliché that desperate romance novelists have been using for decades."

 _"Romance_ novelists? How did we go from Legilimency to romance?" Will asked.

"Because it's a quick fix for bad writers," Pip said. "A soul-gaze only happens if there's an intimate connection between the people involved."

"Whoa!" Will said. "The guy's been here three days, and we're at intimate."

"Sev—" Hermione cleared her throat. "Professor Snape and I have a shared history. The war—"

"The war's been over for decades, Mum," Will protested. 

"Yes, Will, it has, but for those of us who lived through it..." Hermione threw up her hands in a gesture of helplessness. "War brings out the best in some people and the worst in others. We had a tough time, but Severus was in the worst of all possible positions. He— Look, you know the story. Just take a few seconds and try to think what his life was like." 

Pip shook her head. "We couldn't understand. We don't have to. It's pretty obvious you do, though." 

"I'm not sure anyone can really understand, but I'm trying," Hermione admitted.

"You're _trying?"_ Will asked, forfeiting his usual answer, which would have been, "Very."

Hermione picked a pinch of Floo powder from the jar on her mantelpiece. "Professor Snape, if you're awake and decently attired, could you come through?" 

"In a moment," Severus called.

Hermione wished that, just for once, Severus could be a less perfect spy, even if it gave away the fact that he'd been awaiting her call. 

"Mum, what's the score with this guy?" Will demanded.

"Okay. I was hoping that Professor Snape would be here for this—"

"Mum," Pip cut in, "we can wait a minute or two."

The light in the fireplace flared up to a brilliant green, and Severus stepped through the flames and into the room. "You called?" Hermione knew that if she had tried the same thing she'd have been covered in soot or ash, but somehow Severus seemed as pristine as ever, in a fresh shirt, jacket and pants, topped off by robes of emerald green.

"Yes, Severus, I have mentioned to the children about our inadvertent Legilimency, but I thought you should be here before I explained anything else."

"Very well." Severus nodded to both of the children. "Last night, I asked your mother's permission to pay court to her and—"

"And I said yes," Hermione finished.

Severus smirked and shook his head slightly at Hermione's interruption to his prepared speech. "Your mother has made it perfectly clear that her children are her first priority, and that if I wish to be successful, then it will mean reaching an accommodation with you both, as well as earning your mother's affection. We all know that I certainly didn't get off to the best start, but I hope you will understand that, in my professional capacity, I cannot be seen to treat either of you any differently from other pupils. Nevertheless, outside the classroom, I shall try to treat you both as kindly as my personality allows. You're both too old to ever see me as a substitute for your father, and even if you weren't, we're two very different men. It would probably please your mother, however, if over time we did develop a degree of affection, but none of us can _make_ that happen. All we can do is try to be open to the possibility." 

Pip seemed to listen to all this without rancour of any sort, but Will stepped forward, as if given the choice he would place himself between Severus and his mother. "No disrespect intended, sir, but I don't want to see my mother hurt."

"I don't want that either," Severus insisted.

"Then you shouldn't start something you can't finish."

"What's your point?" Severus asked, his eyes narrowing.

"My point?" Will asked. "Why don't you cast a Patronus, and _then_ ask me what my point is?"

"William Arthur Weasley!" Hermione shouted. "That was uncalled for."

"No, Hermione," Severus answered in a tone of determined calm. "He is entitled to his opinion. I think, perhaps, it would be best if I left now. I don't wish to cast a pall over the celebration." He gave a bow in the direction of each of the Weasley women.

"Severus?" 

He soothed away Hermione's fears with a gentle smile. "If I don't see you in the Great Hall, I'm sure we'll meet in Minerva's office," he assured her. "And, if not before, perhaps you will meet me in the entrance hall at five before eleven so that I may escort you to the match?"

Hermione reached out with a hand to detain him on his way to her office door, standing on tip-toe to kiss his cheek. "I'd be honoured, Severus."

"Charlotte—"

"Charlie. Only Granny Granger calls me Charlotte."

Severus's closed lips twitched up at the corner, and he inclined his head in assent. "Charlie, assuming you haven't skimped on your essay, I look forward to finding out if you live up to your namesake. I'll see you in my office at ten. Will, I hope, and I believe, time will prove your fears unfounded, but I suppose it's up to me to earn your trust. I appreciate that you're just concerned about your mother." Severus turned and billowed his way to the door, leaving with a last smile in the direction of the two women. 

"Will, that was unfair," Hermione chided. "I haven't exactly been living in a convent since I left here. Severus isn't telling me that I should forget your father existed. Why should any of us expect him to forget someone he cared about?"

 _"Severus_ isn't a grieving widower. He's an obsessive."

"In case you haven't noticed, _I_ don't intend to spend the rest of my life grieving. Give him a chance," Hermione insisted. 

"Will, he pretty much just told me that detention would be over and done before the match starts," Pip pointed out. "He's making an effort." 

_"That_ has nothing to do with us dating." Hermione was quick to point out. _"That's_ because he wants Slytherin to win. He told me on Thursday as long as your essay was alright, you'd be out before the match." 

"And you couldn't let me know?" Pip asked.

"That was part of your punishment, and don't think he was joking about that essay."

Pip grimaced. "It's everything he asked for," she said.

"But?" Hermione sighed.

"Everything he asked for _and_ a little bit more," her daughter admitted.

Hermione shook her head. "Well, if he calls you an insufferable know-it-all, just wait until he's not in teacher-mode and tell him it's genetic."

"He didn't?" Will asked, looking horrified.

Hermione shrugged. "He called me it once. Your Uncle Ron called me it every other week, and it was all a long time ago in a galaxy far away."

Her son laughed. "Mum, I can buy you as Princess Leia, but Severus Snape is no Han Solo."

"No," Hermione agreed, "your dad was more of a Han, but Lando had his good points, too."

Will gave her an if-you-say-so smile, and Pip, finally, took her new broom out of the box, tracing its sleek lines with loving fingers. The conversation moved to the relative merits of the Slytherin and Hufflepuff Chasers and Keepers, and whether Slytherin would be able to get the lead it needed to win the cup. Will pointed out that Hufflepuff's Beaters would be fools not to try to put his sister out of commission, and Pip replied that just because Will tried to kill her every time Slytherin played Ravenclaw, that didn't mean Hufflepuff would use the same tactic.

It was only twenty minutes later, as Winky, who had volunteered to act as the family's personal elf when they had moved into married quarters and stayed with Hermione since, was clearing up the breakfast things, that she pointed out the box and letter that Pip had failed to spot among the clutter on the table. "Mistress Charlie has not opened her present!" the little elf squeaked, passing it to the young girl.

Charlie opened the letter first, easily recognising the spiky script.

 _'Dear Charlotte,_

 _I believed that a gift of some sort would be appropriate, but I had no idea how much I should spend or what sort of things you might like. In the end, I decided it was better to take a risk on looking cheap, rather than have you or your mother think I might be trying to buy your affections. I hope by next year I'll know you well enough to make a reasonable attempt on my own. Perhaps, if it turns out that there is something on your wishlist that no one else buys you and that your mother agrees isn't excessive, then you can let me know._

 _For now, I hope my recollections of your father's Hogwarts Quidditch career will suffice. If your mother doesn't have a Pensieve you can use, I'll arrange to rectify that._

 _Best wishes,_

 _S.S.'_

Will leaned in to read the epistle over his sister's shoulder, nudging her when he noticed her eyes beginning to fill. "So he's not a total loss," he teased. 

  


* * *

  


"So, Severus, to what do I owe the honour?" Minerva asked as she held out a hand to indicate that he should take a seat. "Have you considered my offer?"

"I have," Severus admitted, "but unless certain rules can be waived, I'm afraid I must decline."

"Certain rules?" Minerva demanded. "To which rules could you possibly be referring?"

"Those regarding fraternisation between school employees," Severus stated baldly, his elbows resting on the arms of the high-backed chair that faced Minerva's desk, his fingers steepled together. "You need not concern yourself about any public impropriety, and in time I expect the situation may be legitimised. However, there are factors which may lead to the courtship taking longer than either I or the lady in question would like. In the meantime, I would request that whatever might occur within our private quarters remain private. If this is impossible, then I must respectfully decline your offer and tender my resignation forthwith."

"Well!" Minerva gaped openly at her colleague.

"Is it so inconceivable that someone might find me attractive?" Severus asked.

"Of course not," Minerva answered with only a slight hesitation.

"Then I fail to see your problem."

"Those rules have existed for centuries," Minerva pointed out.

"And as such they are based on an outmoded code of ethics," Severus countered. "Minerva, I am not talking about a casual affair. I intend to openly pay court to the lady in question, and I will. However, if as a consequence of working here I will be chaperoned like a hormonal teenager, then that is unacceptable." 

"This could be construed as blackmail."

"I prefer to see it as contract negotiations," Severus answered with a devious smile. "You have already said that I am one of many candidates for the position of Potions Master, and that you have a capable person in mind as your successor. Surely for this to class as blackmail, I would have to be your only option."

Minerva gave an exaggerated sigh. "Damn you for a stubborn old serpent, Severus! Why couldn't you do what everyone else has done and pretend you're just good friends until you're ready to send out the wedding invitations?" 

"Because I need to win over her children before she would consider marriage, and that would be all but impossible if the only contact we were to have was in the classroom."

Minerva's face first drained of all its colour, which then returned to leave a livid glow across her cheekbones. She rose to her feet and threw a handful of Floo powder into the grate. "Hermione, I think you should join us," she called out.

Hermione stepped through straight away, as if she'd been standing inches from her own fireplace awaiting the summons.

While Minerva's back was to him, Severus nonchalantly conjured up a comfortable armchair much like the ones in Hermione's private quarters, but taller so that even from her more austere seating Minerva would not be able to look down on its occupant. Then, he rose gracefully to his feet and extended a hand to Hermione, giving a courtly bow when she accepted it. "You have a little soot on your robes, Professor. Let me get that for you." He used his wand to syphon off the coal dust and then waited for Hermione to take her seat before resuming his own.

"Thank you for Pip's gift, Severus," Hermione said, cutting in before Minerva could get over her shock at Snape's display. "It was incredibly thoughtful. She's using my Pensieve now, and poor Will has been appointed to keep an eye on the time and get her out if she spends too long in there. I'm sure both of them will treasure them, though, as will I if I can persuade Pip to let me borrow them." 

"Oh for Merlin's sake!" Minerva interrupted. "Will you two stop that?"

"Stop what?" Severus asked. "We're merely being civil."

"Your tongues are being civil." Minerva insisted. "Your eyes are saying that if I turned my back for five minutes I'd come back and find you both naked. I've half a mind to get Poppy down here to check you both for love potions."

Severus raised a quixotic eyebrow. "If it will set your mind at rest, I have no objection." His hand moved the few inches from his own chair arm to rest over Hermione's.

"What happens if I refuse to meet your terms?" Minerva asked.

"It's not like we want any extra money," Hermione quickly protested. "You just split the deputy head's responsibilities, split the money, and call us both _assistant_ headmaster or something. Then, when you retire, Severus becomes headmaster, and I become deputy headmaster. I know it has to go before the board, but I don't see why they'd object."

"Those weren't the terms she meant, dear," Severus explained. "We were still discussing whether I should remain on the staff at all. Let's say that if I resign, I would not be returning to the Southern Hemisphere. I would acquire a property in Hogsmeade and continue my research from there. Perhaps, I would take on a small staff, as I did at the farm, to cultivate the necessary ingredients and do routine brewing, perhaps not. Apart from product development, the operation in the Falklands is self-sufficient. I have no need to return there other than occasional visits."

Minerva turned her attention to Hermione. "And, no doubt, you would spend all the free time you could spare in the village?"

"With the exception of those times when Pip and Will are prepared to acknowledge I'm their mother, probably, yes," Hermione admitted.

"And, in effect, I lose two Heads of House, my Potions Master and my deputy head all in one fell swoop. Very well, _except in an emergency_ your private quarters will remain inviolate. If I do need to contact either of you, I will come through to your offices and then knock on the intervening door, and I shall pass your request about the positions of assistant head on to the board with a recommendation that they approve it. I hope that is the last of your demands."

Severus gave Hermione's hand a gentle squeeze, but his smirk was for Minerva. "Think of it as a living example of the inter-house co-operation you wanted to encourage." He stood up and bowed to both the women. "Now, I'm afraid I must ask you both to excuse me, or I'll be late for an appointment with Hermione's daughter." 

  


* * *

  


"Miss Weasley." Severus pulled open the door to his classroom and let Pip in. "Take a seat at one of the front desks. I have provided a quill and some parchment for you, and there are some questions on the board for you to attempt." His teaching façade slipped enough that he gave the girl a brief smile. "If you are as good as your mother seems to think, you should finish them in the time it takes me to read and grade your essay."

"Yes, sir," Pip answered. "Sir, may I have permission to speak to you briefly as my mother's daughter rather than a pupil?"

Severus's eyes seemed to scan the room as if to make sure they were alone, and he cast an Imperturbable on the door he had closed behind the girl. "You may."

"I wanted to say thank you for the memories you gave me. There isn't anything you could have bought that could possibly be better."

Severus's smile widened enough to actually show his straight white teeth. "You're most welcome. I hope you have an enjoyable day."

"You realise that since I'm a teenager, I'll probably take you up on your offer to buy me something, anyway," she clarified, "but the memories are something I'll keep as long as I live. Thank you, sir."

Severus snorted his amusement. "I think when you are talking to me as your mother's daughter you may call me Severus."

"Sir is shorter. I don't suppose I could get away with Sev? It would make Uncle Ron and Uncle Harry's eyes pop halfway out of their heads."

Severus shook his head in disbelief. "You really are both your parents' daughter. You've certainly inherited their Gryffindor brazenness. You _do_ realise that no one has called me Sev more than once since I was younger than you are now?"

"Sorry, sir," Pip answered automatically.

"However, since I am allowed to call you Charlie, and you also employed enough Slytherin wiles to arouse my curiosity as to just how appalled your collective aunts and uncles might be, you _may_ call me Sev... in a social environment. Now, if I am to finish marking your essay in time for you to practice with that new broom before the match, I think we must revert to being teacher and pupil." He flicked his wand in the direction of the door to end the Imperturbable charm, and held out a hand to take the roll of closely written parchment Pip passed to him. 

"Sev?" Pip added just before she took her seat. "Make her happy."

Severus nodded once. "I intend to try." 

  


* * *

  


Hermione opened the school gates and was immediately engulfed by the swarm of predominantly ginger-haired guests who were waiting there.

"Mum! Dad!" she exclaimed, as she hugged each of her parents in turn. "I didn't know you were coming."

"Arthur and I stopped off to pick them up," Molly explained, hugging Hermione in her turn before Harry and Ron claimed her. Soon Hermione had been hugged by so many in-laws that she was practically dizzy.

"Does anyone want anything to eat or drink?" Hermione asked.

Angelina Weasley shook her head. "They shouldn't. They've all been having mugs of tea and bacon sarnies at our place." She gestured in the general direction of Hogsmeade, where she and George lived in the house behind and above what had once been Zonko's Joke Shop.

"Oliver!" Hermione spotted the former Gryffindor Keeper, lurking at the back of the throng. "Thanks for coming."

"If she's anything like her dad, you couldn't pay me to stay away," Wood replied. "Just tell me she's not going to run off and chase dragons."

Hermione laughed. "I don't think anyone knows what she's going to do, least of all her." She slipped an arm around the waist of each of her parents. "Let's see if the teacher's section of the stands is big enough to hold you all."

At this point Fred and Roxanne came running down the grassy slope and collided with the group at speed. They were followed more sedately by Will and Percy's daughter, Lucy. 

"'Ere!" shouted George as his son picked up Angelina and spun her around before putting her back down. "You two behave yourselves." Of course, he had no compunction about greeting his daughter in the same manner.

Ginny looked around at the huge group of aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins. "Are you sure McGonagall agreed to this?" she asked.

Hermione grinned. "She said she'd just send the bill for any damages to George, on the grounds it would probably be him or his two that caused them."

"Hey!" James and Al protested. "What about us?"

"You're supposed to be adults," pointed out their strawberry-blonde Veela cousin, with a toss of her waist-length hair.

Hermione looked at her watch, and her eyes sought out her son. "Will, can you take care of your grandparents and make sure they get a good seat? I need to—"

"Meet your date?" Will suggested, and the eyes of everyone in the group turned on her. Fred whispered something in his father's ear, and George's eyebrows rose up nearly far enough to meet his slightly receding hairline. 

"Hermione Weasley!" Ginny protested. "What sort of best friend finds herself a man and doesn't let me know?" 

"You know. You all know, now." She looked at her watch again. "I've really got to go, if I want to meet him at the school and get back in time for the start of the match."

Hermione headed for the school at the fastest possible walk. She made it ten yards before she heard Ron's horrified screech.

"Snape!"

Resisting the urge to break into a run, she stiffened her back and kept on walking. 

  


* * *

  


Hermione slipped through the doors against the exiting tide of pupils, and for a second she was able to watch Severus, who was clearly expecting her to come down the marble staircase, without him seeing her. There was pride and even arrogance in his erect bearing, but in the instant he became aware of her gaze, his mouth formed an almost smile that she knew was just for her.

He strode toward her as if he owned the hall, and pupils scurried out of his path. Several of the students stared openly when he extended his arm and Hermione took it, making Hermione wonder just how many of her generation had passed on tales of the austere Potions professor to their children.

"Good morning," Severus remarked conversationally. "I hope your assessment of your daughter's flying skills is as accurate as your description of her Potions aptitude."

"I take it her essay met with your approval, then?" Hermione asked as they left the hall.

"Would you be offended if I were to say that her performance outmatched your own at that age?"

"Only a very self-obsessed mother would be offended by such generous praise of her child," Hermione pointed out. 

"She demonstrated an intuitive understanding of the reasoning behind the modifications I made to Libatius Borage's methods. Of course," Severus added with a smirk, "the fact that she felt it necessary to so exceed the parameters of the exercise I set reminded me precisely of you." 

Hermione lifted a teasing eyebrow. "When I do something I like to do it thoroughly."

"So I recall," Severus agreed with a wicked gleam in his eye.

Hermione darted him a warning glance under her lashes. "Shh," she hissed under her breath.

Severus leaned in to speak softly in her ear. "Don't tell me you forgot that there were things other than Potions in that book. No one will overhear. The Muffling Charm will stay in place until we are clear of all the pupils and we reach the redheaded hell that you call family."

"They're lovely people," Hermione protested.

"They are people who love _you._ There's a difference."

"Severus, you spent decades lying to Voldemort. This can't even compare," she pointed out.

"Hmmm. The Dark Lord or Molly Weasley? It's a harder choice than you might think."

Hermione was just about to argue when she noticed the smile he didn't quite hide. "Ooh, you. I thought for a second you were serious."

"I am," Severus insisted. "At least if my former master decided to torture someone you could count on him to get bored after a couple of hours. Molly, I suspect, will make sure I suffer far longer." 

It was at this point that they turned the final corner and entered the stands, allowing Severus his first view of three generations of Weasleys and Potters. It was just as well that he had left the Muffliato in place, otherwise Hermione was certain those pupils nearby would have learned some new and colourful vocabulary. Finally, however, he ran out of expletives. "Weasley married a Veela? _That's_ the most beautiful woman who would have him?"

Hermione grinned. "You remember Fleur's sister, Gabrielle? Ron helped get her out of the lake in fourth year... and then he became a war hero." Hermione added a hint of irony to the phrase, as she always did whenever anyone used the description for her. "I think she was about fourteen when she decided she was going to keep him. Ron's been under her spell ever since." 

"Incredible," Severus muttered underneath his breath. "I'm removing the charm now," he warned.

"Not everyone sees Ron the way you do," Hermione pointed out in a soft tone, intended only for Severus's ears. "The amazing thing is, because she sees him as someone special, he really makes the effort to live up to her expectations. He's a senior Auror now. Another couple of years and he'll be battling it out with Harry for head of the department. When we were together Ron used to comment on my 'tone of surprise' when he did something right. She coaxes the best out of him without even trying."

"Well, he doesn't look like he slept in his clothes, and he's had a haircut inside the last month," Severus conceded.

"Okay, so she lays his clothes out for him and does his hair," Hermione admitted, "but really a lot of it is him. Now, shh. If we don't find a seat, we'll miss the start. Look, Ginny's kept us a couple next to her and Harry." 

"My joy knows no bounds," Severus replied in a tone that said the complete opposite. Nevertheless, he guided Hermione to the back row seats and conjured a gold-coloured cushion for her, next to his own silver grey one, when they reached their destination.

The game started almost as soon as they took their seats, and shortly thereafter everyone was too caught up in the action to notice if Hermione took Severus's hand, squeezing it tight whenever Pip performed a particularly daring manoeuvre.

  


* * *

  


"Did you see the look on Smith's face when she pulled out of that dive and he realised he was going to collide with his own Keeper?" one of the many cousins enthused loudly, as the group made their way down from the stands.

"They were finished after that," another cousin answered less happily.

"I told you you should have disowned her as soon as she was sorted into Slytherin," Ron shouted over to Hermione. "Now look what she's done."

"Ron!" Molly's voice had a warning tone.

"Don't worry," Fred assured his uncle. "We'll beat them fair and square next year."

"Not unless you get yourself a better Seeker, you won't," Will pointed out.

"We still beat Ravenclaw," Roxanne pointed out.

"Yeah, well, we need a better Seeker, too."

Hermione and Severus let the conversation flow over and around them as they made their way back to the school, but when they reached the entrance hall, Severus used their joined hands to draw Hermione off to one side. "I'm afraid I have certain duties I must attend to," he began.

"You mean you need to go and make sure the house-elves have provided for the conquering heroes?" Hermione asked.

"Something like that," Severus admitted, "though I suspect that most of the conquering heroes will be joining you. Nevertheless, a celebration in the common room is traditional. I will join you shortly."

"You better!" Hermione teased. "If you leave me to be grilled on my own by that lot for longer than ten minutes, I'm going to start telling people that I was sitting next to you at dinner, drinking my pumpkin juice, when just like magic I realised how attractive you were."

"Witch!" Severus accused, with a hint of laughter in his eyes. "They'd tear me limb from limb."

"I'll see you soon, then," Hermione answered and she would have turned away, but Severus didn't release her hand, lifting it instead to his lips.

"Very soon, indeed," he promised, as Hermione's cheeks took on a becoming flush. 


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus has to come up with a way to circumvent school rules and win over Hermione's children.

  
  


_For iulia_linnea_

Hermione made it as far as the first floor before a firm hand pulled her out of the stream of people and dragged her into the relative privacy of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

"Now, spill, Hermione Granger Weasley!" Ginny stood with crossed arms, her best 'mother glare', and Hermione half-expected her to start tapping her foot impatiently.

Instead, Hermione checked her make-up in the cracked and damp-spotted mirror. "Myrtle! Go check out the prefects' bathroom," she called, waiting for Myrtle's departing splash, and adding a Muffliato to be safe, before she addressed Ginny's demand. 

"What do you want to know, Gin?" she asked, with feigned composure.

"Are you kidding?" Ginny exploded. "Everything. What the hell is going on for a start? I didn't even know he was alive. I mean, no body, no portrait and all that, but as far as I was aware no one had even seen him since the battle."

"No body, no portrait..." Hermione pointed out. "Minerva's always been sure he was around somewhere, but it was only when Slughorn was taken into St. Mungo's that she managed to contact him."

"So how long has he been back, you sneaky thing?" Ginny asked. "And when did all the hand-holding start? And does it go further than hand-holding?"

Hermione ducked and pretended to rearrange the skirts of her robes to hide the colour she could feel rising to her cheeks. "Thursday. He got here early on Thursday morning. We— Ehm. Well, I guess you could say the hand-holding started last night, and the rest is none of your business."

"You hussy!" Ginny accused with a huge grin on her face.

"It's not like that," Hermione protested.

"Hermione, how long have we been friends?" the redhead asked in a placatory tone.

Hermione gave a tiny snort of laughter. "My whole life, or it feels like it."

"Then don't you think if I was going to set myself up as judge and jury I'd have done it a long time ago? I know you, and I know if you _are_ doing more than holding hands, then it's because you believe you have a future together."

Hermione dared a sideways look at her friend under her lashes.

"Of course, you're still a slapper," Ginny added, as soon as she caught Hermione's eye. Both women began to giggle like the teenagers they had once been. 

"Am not," Hermione demurred. "A little impulsive, maybe, but I hardly think a woman in her forties who's had three lovers qualifies as a slapper." 

"Alright, I can buy _you_ being impulsive. Snape is another matter entirely."

"I think you may have to get used to calling him Severus," Hermione pointed out.

"That might take a decade or two," Ginny observed. "Are you sure you know what you're getting into, Hermione? I mean, I know you were always more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt than the rest of us, right up to..." She took a deep breath. "Let's say he's no Charlie. I imagine he'll be a lot more high maintenance."

"He's a good man, and he's overdue for some happiness," Hermione replied. "And I guess I worried a little to begin with that he's so different, but the more I think about it the more I think it's right that way. I couldn't go out with someone like Charlie. I'd end up expecting him to _be_ Charlie, and that wouldn't be fair on either of us. Severus... is Severus. And when he loves someone, he does it with every part of his being. That has to be worth a bit of effort."

Ginny's expression turned serious. "You think he loves you?" she asked as softly as if she stood at someone's deathbed.

"Not—" Hermione paused. The evening before she could have honestly said, 'Not yet,' but now she wasn't sure. "Ask him, _if_ you dare," she answered instead. "It feels right, Ginny. It feels like we _know_ each other better than we logically have any right to. I know there are no guarantees, but—" 

_"There_ you are!" Ron barged into the room, closely followed by Harry.

Ginny fluffed at her hair with her fingers, as if she'd had no other reason for being in the room than to use the decrepit mirror. "Come on, Hermione. Let's go."

"Heyy! We wanted to talk to Hermione, too, you know," Ron protested.

Hermione sighed as she pulled the door open. "So talk while we walk, or were you really planning on a lecture?"

"Snape, Hermione? Snape?" Ron demanded, though he managed to keep his volume down to a conversational level.

"Your problem?" Hermione asked even more quietly, making no allowances for the fact that the two men had long since got out of the habit of climbing six floors worth of stairs.

"My problem is that it's _Snape!"_ Ron protested again.

"Yes, Ron, Snape. Intelligent, articulate, brave, intellectually stimulating, physically appealing Snape."

"I didn't want to know that," Harry muttered under his breath.

"Then you shouldn't let Ron lead the interrogation," Hermione pointed out, by now a full flight ahead of her childhood companions. She waited for them to catch her up. "It seems to me that two men who're paid to be observant should be able to work out that a man who stays in that sort of physical shape will be attractive to the female sex."

"But it's Snape!" Ron protested.

"Ron," Ginny cut in. "If that's all you have to say, then shut up! She knows it's Professor Snape, and she was there when you were all growing up. She also knows better than any of you that how a person comes across in the classroom has next to nothing to do with how they come across in a social setting. It's her choice, and unless you have some specific objection that you want to discuss in a rational manner, then leave her alone."

"What about the age difference?" Harry asked softly. "He's old enough to be your father."

Hermione stopped at the next landing, so she could look Harry in the eye when he reached the step below. "I married a man seven years older than me, and I thought we'd have matching Zimmer frames. It didn't work out that way, but I wouldn't change the time we had together for anything. Severus is twenty years older than me. In wizarding terms, it's nothing. Maybe we _will_ grow old and grey together. Maybe we won't, but I'll worry about him being a hundred and eighty to my hundred and sixty when we get that far." She looked from Ron to Ginny. "Your dad had it right. Young and whole men don't stay that way, and I've found someone I think I can care for. I'm not going to give up on him because he's old enough to remember the Bay City Rollers."

"Actually," Severus's voice carried up from the bottom of that flight of stairs. "I preferred T Rex." 

Hermione grinned. "Much more manly," she remarked.

"I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long?" Severus asked as he overtook Ron, Ginny and Harry.

"Just long enough," Hermione answered, reaching out to take Severus's hand in hers for the rest of the climb. 

  


* * *

  


Severus's eyes scanned the crowded Room of Requirement, like a hawk looking for prey. "Hagrid?" he suggested.

"Huh?" Hermione asked.

"I would rather get those apologies I need to make out of the way, but I assume that if I were to leave you unattended, then Potter and Weasley would mount another attack and my earlier rescue would all be for naught. I thought Hagrid might be a suitable companion to leave you with temporarily."

"If it wasn't for the fact that my parents would take it as a personal insult that I didn't introduce you to them straight away," Hermione added. "I'll probably be reprimanded for not introducing you before the match." 

"Your parents?" Severus quickly asked before he stifled any hint of unease. "I didn't believe you were expecting to see them today."

"I wasn't, but Mum and Molly like to gang up and surprise me every now and then." 

"Where are they?" Severus asked. 

Hermione's laugh was like water burbling from a fountain. "You'll know them when you see them, believe me. They're probably not too far from Molly and Arthur." She led him toward the corner of the room where Arthur was readily visible thanks to his height. 

What little was left of his once vibrant hair had faded to a sandy shade, and the laugh lines around his eyes had deepened, but his eyes still sparkled with warmth and intelligence as he watched his daughter-in-law and her escort approach. "Severus! Hermione! Come and join us," he called out.

"See," Hermione whispered to her escort. "Does that sound like he blames you for what happened to George?"

"Arthur was always more forgiving than Molly," Severus answered equally quietly. "Well, I suppose I can at least get those apologies out of the way." He closed the last couple of steps and released Hermione's hand so that he could extend his to Arthur in greeting. 

Arthur shook Severus's hand enthusiastically while Hermione greeted Molly and two of the most Mugglish Muggles Severus could imagine. "Arthur, about George—"

"Severus, accidents happen in war. George knew the risk he was taking," Arthur answered calmly.

"But—"

"Severus," Molly cut in. "I won't deny that we held a grudge at first, but Harry saw to it that we understood what happened. Did you really think that after everything you went through we would blame you because the person you were trying to protect our son from happened to move at the wrong moment? Even if we had, the debt would have been more than offset by what you did to protect Ginny the following year. I'm sure if you hadn't intervened, the Carrows would have come up with a far more inventive punishment for trying to steal Gryffindor's sword than a trip into the Forbidden Forest."

"You can't mean that," Severus protested. "I maimed your son." 

"George is fine," Arthur assured him. "He's a bit deaf, especially when it suits him, but he's healthy and he's happy, and he has been for a very long time, thanks in no small part to you."

"I didn—"

This time he was prevented from further protest as Hermione placed her fingers on his lips. "Severus, don't you realise that it was your memories that gave Harry the information he needed? Without you, Voldemort would have won. By now, there wouldn't be a Muggle-born left, and if families like the Weasleys survived..."

"We'd be homeless, or in hiding or in Azkaban," Molly finished with a noticeable shiver. "Or worse."

"I— Excuse me." Severus turned abruptly on his heel, heading rapidly for the door.

"Hermione?" Her bewildered mother looked to Hermione for an explanation of Severus's abrupt departure, and her father stepped up to place a reassuring hand on his wife's shoulder.

"Don't worry about it, Mum. I'll check on him in a bit if he doesn't make it back on his own."

"Who is that man, Hermione?" her mother persisted. "The only Severus you've ever mentioned was your old teacher, but in my day we didn't touch our teachers the way you just touched him."

"I didn't touch him like that when I was his pupil, either, Mum, but I'm not a student any more. I'm his colleague and his equal, and some day, if things go as well as we'd both like, I may be his wife." 

"Hermione!" The shocked chorus came from Molly and both her own parents, but it was to the one person who had remained silent that Hermione turned her attention. Arthur knew Severus. Her parents didn't, and Hermione trusted Arthur's judgement.

Arthur met her gaze steadfastly as always. He said nothing for a long couple of seconds, simply looking her in the eye while he considered. "Severus is a good man," he finally pronounced. "I hope you'll both be very happy."

Hermione threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him tight. "Thank you, Arthur!"

"You're welcome, dear," Arthur assured her as he stroked her hair. "You know Molly and I think of you almost as if you were our own daughter. We just want you and the children to be happy." 

"Mum? Dad? I know you don't know him and, well, I know it was a little weird the way he rushed off like that, but..." 

"Severus is a very private person," Arthur observed, "and his role in the war meant he was treated with mistrust more often than not. I suspect he thought we would be less than sympathetic."

Hermione smiled her appreciation of Arthur's understanding.

Her mother's smile was far more hesitant, but it was there nonetheless. "If you think he can make you happy. You've always made the right choices up until now."

"What about Pip and Will?" her father asked.

Hermione gave a small silent laugh. "I know it sounds like a strange thing to say about a teacher, but he's not used to dealing with children. He's really trying, though. He gave Pip his memories of her dad's Hogwarts Quidditch games. I think she's willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but Will will take a bit of convincing before he's prepared to step down as 'Man of the House'. It's early days."

Molly gave a wistful sigh. "It might seem hard to imagine now, but in three years both of them will be making their own way in the world. Will knows that just as well as you do. He'll come around if he sees Severus makes you happy."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "I wish I was as sure as you are. He's got Charlie's stubborn streak." 

"And underneath all that teenaged angst, he's as soft-hearted as either one of you," Arthur added.

"Who's soft-hearted?" Ron asked, as he, Gabrielle, Ginny and Harry joined the group. "And don't tell me you're talking about Snape." 

Harry passed Hermione a glass of white wine and then took a sip from the glass he retained.

Gabrielle shook her head slightly, and Ron's eyes took on a lightly glazed expression as her long platinum tresses caught the light. "Ron sees things always as a man."

"How else am I _meant_ to see them?" he asked. 

"Well," Gabrielle began. She spoke slowly, as was her habit when speaking English, and her phraseology was occasionally a little off, but, unlike her sister, she no longer had a readily discernible accent. "I think your Severus is very brave, and quite... ehm, dashing? Not a pretty man, perhaps, but handsome like the hawk. In France, women are educated to appreciate the mature men."

Ron opened his mouth, but quickly closed it again. As so often happened, Gabrielle had closed down his objections effortlessly. If his wife said she appreciated mature men, the last thing he would think of doing was pursuing a juvenile argument, at least in front of her. 

Ginny lifted an eyebrow and treated Hermione to a teasing smirk.

Hermione turned to her oldest friend. "Harry? I take it you have something to say on the matter since you were tagging along after Ron."

To her surprise, Harry grinned at her before he took another sip of wine. "Mostly I just wanted to hear what you had to say, but I get the impression that this is one of those female things. If I was still young and stupid, I'd probably pester you anyway. These days, it's enough that you think you know what you're doing and Ginny agrees... Just so long as he knows that if he hurts you, you've got five brothers-in-law who'll hunt him down."

Ron grinned broadly at this suggestion, the gleam in his eyes verging on manic until Gabrielle nudged him and asked where he'd put Pip's present.

Ginny gave a snort of laughter. "Men! He trained you all."

Hermione nodded her agreement. "She's right. It'd be like setting Dawlish on Dumbledore. If I thought there was any need to threaten him so he stayed on the straight and narrow, I wouldn't be... seeing him in the first place. And Molly's way scarier than the five of you." She crinkled her nose as if considering. "Okay, maybe Bill could be vaguely intimidating..."

"Heyyy!" both Harry and Ron protested.

"What are they complaining about now?" a youthful voice interjected, and Pip cut into the group at her mother's side, drawing Severus with her.

Ginny grinned as Severus wrapped his free arm around Hermione's waist. "We were just debating which would be more intimidating to someone who knows them, say if it was a matter of protecting the family; your Grandma Weasley or all your uncles?"

"Grandma," Pip answered without hesitation.

Ginny looked Severus in the eye and lifted an eyebrow.

Severus took a moment to watch Bill across the room and consider. "Molly. Bill may have learned some nasty curses over the years, but knowing them and using them are two different things. Molly fought Bellatrix and won. That not only needed skill, but the ferocity of a mother defending her own." He inclined his head in Molly's direction. "Only a fool would think of hurting someone you call family." 

Ginny laughed out loud at Ron's crestfallen look, but her husband didn't care particularly about the slight to his masculine pride. Severus had made it plain he understood the implicit warning.

No one commented further, and Severus dove in to take advantage of the lull in conversation. "I'm very sorry about my abrupt departure before, Mr Granger, Mrs Granger. I'm afraid I haven't completely got over the nausea from the long-distance Portkey, yet."

"Mum, Dad, this is Severus Snape. I know you've heard me talk about him before. Severus, this is my mother, Tracey, and my father, Alan."

Severus nodded his acknowledgement. "A pleasure to meet you both."

Pip stepped around Severus to place a peck on her mother's cheek. "I'm going to go see what the rest of the team are up to." She hugged all four of her grandparents before she delivered her parting bombshell. "I just thought Mum would want Sev back." She took the austere teacher into her arms, and held onto him for long enough that he had time to get over his shock and hug her back. 

"Sev?!" Harry and Ron chorused. 

Pip turned and grinned at her uncles. "You only get to call him that if you have special permission," she announced in a teasing tone. "See you all in a bit."

"Sev?" Ron demanded again.

"Weasley, didn't you just hear Charlie say that she has special permission to call me that? You may call me what you always have, unless you're frightened your mother will reprimand you for bad language."

Hermione swatted gently at her escort's arm. "Behave," she admonished gently.

"Hoi! Hermione!" George's voice carried over from the far corner of the room. "'M'ere, will you?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Come on, you," she told Severus, who bowed again in the direction of her parents.

"Perhaps we'll get a chance to talk more intimately later," he suggested as Hermione towed him in her wake.

"Am I escorting you for my sake or your own?" Severus asked as they wound through the crowd.

"As punishment for scheming with my daughter," Hermione told him. "Do I get to call you Sev?" she teased.

"Only if you want me to call you Herm?" Severus suggested. "I rather like the way that Severus rolls off your tongue." 

Hermione turned to face him and stood on tiptoe to kiss him in a not entirely chaste way. "I know." 

As she turned back in the direction they'd been going, Severus cast a glance back over his shoulder to see if Hermione's friends had been looking. Potter stared in their direction with his mouth hanging open. "Oh, yes, and _she_ says the Slytherins are scheming."

* * *

  


Though both George and Angelina greeted the couple affably enough, Severus was unconvinced by George's desire to discuss his daughter's dropping grades in Defence Against the Dark Arts with her Head of House, and when Hermione and Angelina began to discuss reasons for the apparent decline, Severus took the opportunity to make his last apology.

"I'm sorry about your ear," he began. "It was an accident."

"Fair enough," George answered, steering Severus just a little further away from Hermione. "Now, let's discuss why I really wanted to talk to you," the former twin said in a lower tone. "You spent last night in Hermione's quarters." He held up a hand to cut off Severus's protests. "That's entirely between the two of you. I don't give a damn... unless you hurt her. Hurt her, and I'll make sure that every joke in the shop gets sold for cost price, provided the purchasers swear it's for you."

"I have no intention of hurting her," Severus assured him. "Bu—"

"But accidents happen."

"They do, though hopefully I won't be guilty of anything too heinous," Severus said, not letting George cut in this time. "However, if you did feel compelled to have such a promotional offer, you might find that certain of your more lucrative back room imports would no longer be available to you. For example, you might find that you were no longer the sole British distributor for Och-Kan Products." 

"What—"

"What do I have to do with Och-Kan Products? Nothing at all, except for the fact I own the majority holding. A few of the employees have shares, but I have the controlling interest. Check your Mayan mythology, Mr Weasley, and you'll discover that Och-Kan is one of the names of the Vision _Serpent._ Of course, this entire discussion is purely hypothetical. My intentions regarding your sister-in-law are honourable. However, we cannot come to any formal agreement until such time as I win approval from her children. In the meantime, I would be grateful for your discretion." 

George cocked an eyebrow in Severus's direction and met his eyes, taking a few seconds before he replied. "Like I said, none of my business."

"And your offspring?" Severus asked.

"Know when something should be kept within the family," George assured him. 

  


* * *

  


Afternoon passed into evening, and aside from a growing ennui with the many threats of dire consequences should he fail to treat Hermione well, Severus was surprised to find that for the most part he enjoyed himself. Will was conspicuously keeping his distance from the couple, though Severus knew that he was seldom letting them out of his sight. All too soon, the pupils' curfew approached, and Fred and Roxanne herded the entire party out onto a staircase that led from the Room of Requirement to a flat area of roof that was not normally there.

George took position by the wall that edged the roof and aimed his wand at the astronomy tower. With a silent incantation, he loosed a ball of fire to land dead centre on its roof, where a tangle of fuses met.

Seconds later, wave after wave of fireworks began to fill the sky. Silver serpents chased green dragons. Blue Catherine wheels, all the varying shades of the eyes Charlie had inherited from her father, careened across the darkening sky. Sparklers danced in the air, writing, "Happy Birthday, Pip!" Rockets arced upward, leaving spiralling trails of red and orange, that somehow combined to precisely match the auburn of Charlie's hair, but Severus didn't watch the sky.

He found, instead, that he preferred to observe the reflected light spilling over the delighted faces of two women he thought he was rapidly beginning to love; of all ironies, two Weasleys, one by marriage and one by birth. Two fiercely intelligent women, who both seemed prepared to accept him for who he was, and damn what the world thought. 

And as he watched them, Hermione glanced in his direction, and took her hand from around her daughter's waist, stepping to one side to leave a space between them and beckoning him over, despite Will's forbidding glare from Hermione's other side. 

And when he moved into the space that Hermione had created and put an arm around each of them, Charlie looked up at him and smiled. Astoundingly, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to press his lips to her forehead, and quietly wish her, "Many happy returns."

Too soon, the children returned to their dormitories, and he and Hermione escorted their guests to the school gates, with a parting promise to her parents that they would call on them in the morning.

Severus walked her back to the door of her quarters, where he took her face in both of his hands and pressed his lips to hers. "I'm afraid it is my turn to stalk the corridors tonight. Perhaps, you will join me for a nightcap before I retire?" he suggested.

"Perhaps," she replied, though her eyes promised a more definite response. "When?"

"About an hour. In the meantime, might I suggest that you add an Unplottable Charm to your private rooms? It appears that someone noted our location last night. I suspect that Potter's map is still in use. I'll let you know when I'm ready for you."

Hermione smiled mischievously and stood on tip-toe to whisper in his ear. "I've been ready for you for hours."

"There were many times over the years when I believed you and your confederates would be the death of me. I never thought I might actually enjoy it," Severus crooned in return.

She reached up to tuck a stray strand of hair, which had escaped the band she'd put in for him that morning, behind his ear. She let her fingertips brush the line of his jaw as she withdrew her hand and reached behind her to open her office door. "Soon... Sev-er-us," she promised as she slipped through the doorway. 

  


* * *

  


Severus called in at the kitchens on his way to his quarters, allowing Sylvie to choose a bottle of wine for him. "The best, Sylvie."

"Once McGonagall deducts the cost of the best from your salary, you'll have no salary left. What about this one?" the elf demanded.

"The best," Severus re-affirmed.

"More money than sense," the elf muttered under his breath as he gave a snap of his fingers and disappeared. A few seconds later there was another pop, and he handed Severus a dusty bottle. "That harridan wouldn't know the difference between vintage elf-made cabernet sauvignon and paint stripper. They used to get the decent stuff, but he must have been the one with taste because she buys fizzy screw-top rubbish."

"She isn't a harridan, and even if she wouldn't know the difference, and I suspect that you're wrong, I would. This isn't a night for cutting corners, Sylvie."

"I'll remind you you said that when you complain about not seeing a Galleon until September," the elf insisted. 

"I'm sure you will, my friend, _if_ you hear me complain."

  


* * *

  


He shed his outer layers as soon as he reached his private quarters, stripping down to trousers and shirt sleeves. Another five minutes saw the rest of his preparations made, including casting an Unplottable Charm on his private rooms. Then, came the moment of truth.

For the first time in over two decades, he cast a Patronus Charm. Unconsciously, he held his breath as the creature took shape, willing his spirit familiar to find Hermione and pass on his message. 

It streaked toward the fireplace before he had a chance to observe its form fully, but he was sure of one thing; no deer had wings. 

  


* * *

  


Hermione sprawled on her couch. She had a book in her hand, but she had long ago given up on her attempts to read it, having found herself repeating the same paragraph over and over as her attention wandered to the events of the last couple of days.

She had debated over how she should dress for her assignation, whether she should go as she had dressed for the party. In the end, she had decided that she needed to erect no pretence, and she'd prepared for bed as usual, stripped of make-up and teeth brushed and flossed, though she'd chosen one of her favourite robe and nightdress combinations, a calf-length set of cream-coloured silk.

She pondered the moment that had set all this in motion, the single memory she had seen in his mind. It was, she was sure, inaccurate. She doubted that she had looked as radiant as his recollection, but it was obvious that in that moment, something in her look or her smile had caught his attention in a way she would never have believed possible. 

Still, his momentary attraction might have passed unremarked and remained unacted upon, if not for their mental communion and its underlying message of a deeper connection. The book on her shelf called it 'Magic of the Mind', but Hermione preferred to see it as two hearts and souls calling out to each other. Yes, they connected on an intellectual level, but _so_ much more. She smiled to herself at both the thought of the svelte body Severus customarily hid under layers of robes and Harry's squeamishness when she mentioned it. On some levels, she thought, no matter how old they got, all men would always be teenaged boys. 

Which brought her to the biggest potential problem, _her_ teenaged boy, and the fact that he was acting like a teenaged boy. Of course, she would never have believed that Severus could win over and apparently be won over by her teenaged daughter in the space of a day, so maybe, just maybe, there was hope. Perhaps, she should arrange for Will and Severus to share a detention...

And as she pondered how Will would react if Severus made him disembowel horned toads, the translucent bird arrived. It perched on her coffee table and tilted its head to one side as it looked at her. "Come to me, please," it requested in Severus's sultry smooth tones. 

In a matter of seconds Hermione had acceded to his request. His sitting room was lit by candlelight rather than lamps, and, as if he were making a point of letting her see him at his most relaxed, Severus had his arms draped over the back of his leather sofa, with his legs propped up on a footstool, ankles crossed. A study in black and white. As she stepped clear of the fireplace, he held out a hand to her.

She took it, lifting it over her shoulder as she tucked herself in against his side and draped a leg over his.

"Wine?" he suggested, gesturing with his free hand to the end table where the bottle he had received from Sylvie waited with two glasses.

"Do you mind if I pass?" Hermione asked, reaching up to free his hair from its band. "I have to admit that, as attractions go, the nightcap came a very poor second to your company."

"Damn you, woman," Severus replied, managing to make the curse sound like a caress. "Are you always so direct?"

Hermione brushed her lips against his jaw before nibbling gently at his earlobe, a tactic she had discovered was guaranteed to make him squirm. "When I want someone, yes. Gryffindor, remember?" 

With barely a twist of his upper body and a push of one foot against the chair arm which slid them both along the slick surface of the leather, he was poised above her as they lay along the sofa's length. "How could I ever forget?" he purred as her hands pulled his shirt free from his trousers. "No plan survives contact with a Gryffindor." 

"Was it a good plan?" she asked as she pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor.

"I can't remember," he replied, the tip of his tongue tracing the line between her sternum and the tip of her chin while his hands pushed her robe down her arms. 

She tugged her arms free of the restricting fabric, and reached up to cradle his face, her eyes meeting his. "Severus, tell me this is real for you, too. Tell me your heart beats faster when I walk in the room. Tell me that you're falling so hard and so fast that you don't know if you're ever going to come up."

"The answer to those questions is in my trouser pocket," he answered.

"Severus!" 

"Yes, yes, yes, and I said _in_ the pocket, you penis-obsessed hussy," Severus answered in an amused tone, pushing himself back into a seated position, perched on the very edge of the sofa. He reached into the front of his pants and took something small between his fingers. _"This_ was part of the plan you derailed so effectively." He took her hand in his and placed the object on her palm. 

Hermione stared uncomprehendingly at the worn band of white metal and diamond. "Severus? This is an engagement ring."

"It belonged to my grandmother." He held up a hand to stop her interrupting. "Just listen. This morning you thought I was pushing you away, and since I am who I am, it occurred to me that this was unlikely to be the last time you came to that conclusion. I wanted you to have this, so that you know that you're important to me. Whenever you doubt my feelings, I wanted you to have something concrete, something meaningful that you would be able to use as a touchstone. Think of it as an eternity ring if you feel that's appropriate. 

"I don't expect you to wear it on your left hand. Possibly some day, but I doubt I'll convince Will any time soon. You don't even have to wear it at all, just remember that I gave it to you, and why. It and the wedding band, they were the only things my mother managed to keep. Everything else was sold, everything that belonged to the Princes. Most of it went before I was even born, but no matter how bad things became, Mother wouldn't part with these. When she was dying, she gave them to me. She said they'd brought her mother happiness, and if I ever found the right woman, they would bring me happiness, too."

"Severus..." Hermione's voice was roughened with emotion. 

"Hermione, I want you to have it."

Hermione turned the ring over in her palm, admiring its ornate setting. Then she slid it onto the ring finger of her right hand. "Severus, you had me at yes."*

She took his nearest hand in hers, as if the feel of the band on her finger would make it more real for him. "Severus?" she asked slightly hesitantly. "Did you know your Patronus had changed?"

"Know? No. That was why I said nothing when Will challenged me this morning, but I hoped it might have." He gave a wry laugh. "Either way, I thought you had a right to know where we stood before I offered you the ring. Of course, I also hoped it might be something more impressive than a mangy old crow, but beggars can't be choosers."

"It wasn't a crow, idiot," Hermione responded, with an indulgent smile and a slight shake of her head. 

"Really? I thought—"

"It's a raven. According to Native American myth, the first man-god and shaman. In some cultures it's seen as a symbol of good fortune. Okay, in others it means the opposite, but proud, noble, intelligent and you." She took her hand from his and used it to push back the wing of ebony hair that framed one side of his face, savouring the silken texture of the strands as they slid through her fingers. 

She drew her legs up and swung them out from behind Severus's back. Then, pulling her nightdress off over her head as she moved, she padded toward the open bedroom door.

In a second, Severus was on his feet, and shedding his remaining clothing. By the time he reached the bedroom, Hermione was stretched out in the centre of the huge four-poster, her hair a wild corona against the dark green velvet of the bedspread, and though he needed no encouragement, she whispered an invitation. "Severus, make love to me." 

"For the rest of my life," he promised. 

**The End**

*Slightly altered quote by Hermione from Jerry McGuire. 


End file.
